A few months before the Euros, Lauren James injured her Hamstring in a Nations League match against Belgium. She fought back to be in the tournament and played through pain in the latter stages to be part of it.
She fought off criticisms, especially after coming off in the first half of the final.
Her response was “People assume you’re not trying.”
The game against Sweden went to penalties. Alessia Russo scored the first, then Lauren James stepped up, and it was saved.
When she was supposed to be thinking about scoring her penalty, she was thinking about the racial abuse she would face if she missed her penalty and England got kicked out.
Asked if that was on her mind in Zurich, James admitted: "For sure. Stepping up, I was thinking, if I miss I hope I'm not the only one because I know what comes with it - it happened before and keeps happening.
"As sad as it sounds, it was the biggest relief ever that other players missed. Who would have thought that? You always want your team-mates to score so you get through.
"Luckily we missed and got through, but it was not a nice moment - you are playing for your country so you should feel the support from the fans. It shouldn't matter what colour you are."
"A lot of the time fans don't know what is going on, they only know what is in front of them," she said.
"They don't know what someone is dealing with, what is going on in their life. I always say to the fans, be mindful, you don't know what someone is dealing with out there. You could just be adding on to it.
"No player goes into a game or into a season thinking I'm not going to try. It was a Euros, they don't come around often. You could have one leg hanging off, I will still tell you that I'm going to try to play."
After injuring herself again against Sweden she is now in a protective boot after trying to play through the pain in order to help the team.
"I was obviously fighting to be fit for the Euros, then suffered another injury in the quarter-finals, and tried to play on," she revealed.
"Then people assume you're not trying, but at the end of the day I'm in a ridiculous amount of pain which caused me to come off at half-time in the semi-finals and before half-time in the final."
James also suffered a series of injuries last season limiting her to just 17 appearances and four goals for Chelsea as they won a domestic treble.
She has no return date for the Women's Super League champions, and is taking things "day by day".
In that game against Sweden she was unaware how bad her injury was and couldn’t get off the pitch as they had ran out of subs. She did not think the injury was major so played the semi-final.
“Then we're in the final, I can't not play, so I tried again.
"And obviously we won, but I didn't feel great. I didn't play how I wanted to play, I couldn't dribble, I couldn't run properly."
When asked if the injury problems and the criticism affected how much she enjoyed the success of back-to-back titles, she said "for sure".
"It was an amazing achievement, but during the last two games I wasn't able to help the team," she added. "To also get negative comments, from fans and the public - sometimes people are too quick to judge."
"England are playing with 10 men, she's lazy, she's not trying," revealed James. "I'm like, I'm injured! It does put you down."
Jess Carter spoke out about she feared that James wold face similar racism she faced if James missed penalty had decided the outcome against Sweden.
A similar scenario to what occurred in Euros 2020 when Marcus Rashford, Jason Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed their penalties and suffered racial abuse.
But James said that sort of treatment would still never make her think twice about representing her country.
"It's where I'm from, where my mum is from, I always dreamed of playing for my country," she added.
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