DALTON-IN-FURNESS' Georgia Stanway is the future of English football, that is the opinion of Manchester City teammate Lucy Bronze.

After scoring an astonishing 35 goals in 15 games in the Women’s Premier League for Blackburn Rovers, Stanway joined heavy-hitters Manchester City last season and hasn’t looked back.

The 17-year-old made her first-team debut in 2015 and scored twice from the bench against Everton and Bristol Academy, ending her maiden campaign with the club’s Rising Star award.

And striker Stanway has picked up where she left off, scoring a 30-yard screamer into the top corner against Liverpool in the SSE Women’s FA Cup last month doing the rounds on Twitter, while she also helped England qualify for the Women’s Euro 2017 in the Netherlands.

And Bronze, who has 23 senior England caps to her name, believes the teenager has an incredibly bright future in the sport.

“It was quite funny when Georgia came in with us last year because she was a bit star struck at the likes of Toni Duggan and Jill Scott and she was kind of gawping a bit in training. But she gets stuck in and she is not scared of anyone or anything,” said Bronze.

“Last year she didn’t get as much playing time as she would have liked but she understands she is young and she will be an asset to Manchester City this season.

“She is the future of Manchester City and probably the future of England as well. She is an unbelievable talent. She came on for us recently in a game when it was 0-0 – was chucked in the deep end – and she scored a goal.

“She did not look out of place at all and she never has. She probably never will.”

In partnership with the FA, Women’s FA Cup sponsors SSE are launching a new girls-only participation programme, designed to increase the number of girls between the ages of 7-14 playing the game.

The programme will see FA affiliated clubs offered grants to help run new girls-only teams and create the next generation of female football players.

And after her own travails playing the sport growing up, Bronze is convinced the participation programme can only benefit the next generation of girls.

“When I was younger I only played with boys,” added the 24-year-old. “My mum took me to an all-boys programme and thankfully the people there knew about women’s football.

“They said to her ‘you need to be taking her to here’ and ‘you need to do this with her’.

“The biggest problem was that once you got to 12 years old, girls couldn’t play with boys anymore.

“I hit 12 and I was like ‘well who am I supposed to play with now’ because the nearest girls team for me was an hour’s drive from where I lived.

“Now there is a girls’ team in the town that I lived in and there are teams all over the country which is great and programmes like this one are so important.”

SSE are proud to be creating more opportunities than ever for girls to play football through the Participation Programme. To find out more about the work SSE are doing in women’s football, visit: www.SSE.co.uk/girls-united