Lioness Striker Lauren James Has a Famous Premier League Brother

The name on everybody's lips following the group stage of the Women's World Cup is Lauren James. The Chelsea striker put in an incredible performance on 1 Aug. as England defeated China 6-1 to take them through to the final 16 of the tournament, with Lauren scoring two of the goals. She has also become the third player on record to be directly involved in five goals in a Women's World Cup game, according to the BBC, and almost scored a hat trick herself if VAR hadn't intervened.

The 21-year-old is certainly making her mark on women's football, and it seems the game really does run in her blood. She is the younger sister of Chelsea and England defender, Reece James, 23, making them the first brother and sister siblings to represent England. And the pair are super supportive of each other's careers, too.

Having sat on the bench for the opening game against Haiti, she joined the team on the pitch for the Denmark game on 28 July. Soon after the final whistle, which saw Lauren lead the Lionesses to a 1-0 win, Reece posted a photo of them both as kids playing football together on Twitter. He simply captioned it "proud". He then took to Instagram after the China game and added fire emojis to a snap of his baby sister. Reece himself narrowly missed out on a call-up for England in last year's FIFA World Cup due to an injury.

"His advice was to just enjoy it, have fun and try to score goals," Lauren told The Guardian of her brother's pointers, as she admitted seeing the Lionesses with the EUROs last summer has given her more motivation to be part of a winning squad. Ahead of the tournament, Lauren told Yahoo, "I want to carve out [my own name] and be known as 'this is Lauren James'. At the moment, men's football has a lot bigger profile and I'm sure there are times when I've said 'oh, that's so and so's sister', I think it's just natural. But it doesn't bother me too much because I know I have my own career."

Somehow, we think she'll definitely be Lauren James in her own right from here onwards.