Manchester City Ladies' club captain, and centre-back, Steph Houghton has publicly stated her happiness at leading the English Lionesses to the Women's World Cup semi-final, where they'll face the competition's holders Japan on Wednesday night. 

They saw off the hosts, Canada, with a tense 2-1 victory in the early hours of Sunday morning - which was watched by over a million people in the UK alone. Women's football has been gradually increasing in terms of a growing audience, and the World Cup has been viewed as a perfect time for the majority to stand up and take notice of the vast developments taking place in the sport. 

Mark Sampson's ladies became the first English team to reach the semi-finals of a World Cup since the men last did it - in 1990 in Italy. The women will go head-to-head with the 2011 winners and current holders Japan, in Wednesday night's encounter. Houghton hopes that regardless of the result, it'll encourage more women to take up an interest in football - and sport in general. 

She reflected on the Olympics in 2012, where Britain hosted the prestigious event. "We all mention the Olympics and how much of a watershed moment that was for women's football in England. Playing at Wembley and getting 70,000 fans to watch us beat Brazil was a massive moment but the fact that we're making history and we made history the other day, we made [history] again, it just shows how much people have got supporting us back home."

On the fact their performances have inspired more girls to play: "We always said that we had one aim when we came here, that was to inspire and I think, hopefully if the mums and dads have let their young girls watch the game late in England, hopefully we've got a lot of young girls playing football at an early age and in the next few years we have a stronger English national team. That's the ultimate aim and to keep growing the game." 

Japan, who are ranked two places above the English Lionesses, will be expected to prevail, but the pressure is off Sampson's side - having already exceeded expectations following their first and only defeat of the tournament, at the hands of France.

She also stated: "If you look at this tournament, we played Mexico and Colombia and obviously we're higher ranked than them so I think we've experienced both now in terms of being expected to win and playing a bit of the underdog. We treat every game as it comes and we know that it's going to be a massive game [against the Japanese] and we've got to respect them, obviously they're world champions for a reason."