Lucia Kendall exclusive: England’s breakout star reflects on ‘crazy’ ascension, securing a spot in the Lionesses’ Women’s World Cup squad and raising the standards as Aston Villa

There are a lot of conflicting thoughts in the mind of Lucia Kendall, the 22-year-old Aston Villa midfielder whose first season in the Women’s Super League went so well that she was called up to the England squad by Sarina Wiegman within weeks of it starting. One minute, she is talking, unprompted, about next summer’s World Cup. The next, she is admitting that it has still not sunk in yet that she is a fully-fledged Lioness.

That summarises Kendall’s 2025-26 season quite well. After all, it really was a whirlwind. In July of last year, she joined Villa from Southampton, the WSL 2 club for whom she debuted at the age of 16 and played regular senior football with for five seasons. In October, exactly a month after her WSL debut at Villa Park against Chelsea, she was named in a senior England squad for the first time, granted her full debut two weeks later against Australia. She was named Player of the Match.

If that wasn’t surreal enough, Kendall returned to Southampton on the Lionesses’ next camp and scored at St. Mary’s in the victory over Ghana. The midfielder’s performances in those friendlies were so good, even, that she was in the line-up for Spain’s visit to Wembley in April, in World Cup qualifying. England won 1-0.

“Crazy,” Kendall replies, as GOAL asks about all the milestones in a season that also saw her start 16 of Villa’s 22 WSL games, in her first year at the level. That would be a headline in most cases, but it is almost relegated to a footnote in Kendall’s last 12 months, such has been the quantity of notable moments. “Even now, I look back on it and I can’t really take it all in,” she concedes.

But as the 22-year-old looks ahead to her second season in the WSL, one that will be followed by the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil, there is no indication that she has been over-awed by all that has taken place. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I think playing for England really opened my eyes to like, ‘Wow, this is what I’ve dreamed of’, and I think it almost relaxed me,” she says, incredibly. “It was almost like, ‘I’ve done it. This is what I’ve dreamed of, so let me just go and enjoy it’.”