Mark Sampson said he is determined to write even more history with England after guiding them to a first-ever win in the knockout stages of a World Cup.
Captain Steph Houghton and right-back Lucy Bronze scored the goals that gave the Lionesses a last-16 victory over Norway in Ottawa, after Solveig Gulbrandsen had headed the Scandinavians ahead early in the second half.
It was England’s first win outside the group stages in four attempts.
England 2-1 Norway
FIFA Women's World Cup 2015
Second Round
Monday 22 June
Lansdowne Stadium, Ottawa
Sampson said: "I’m really proud of the players. I can’t understate that. They were under huge pressure. They had some memories they wanted to erase.
"The momentum we will get from this win will put us in a great place going into the quarter final.
"England needed some moments today. KB [goalkeeper Karen Bardsley] produced two or three and every other player stepped up too. To show that character and resilience to come from a goal down in this tournament is an incredible achievement.
"This team will always be remembered. They will always be the first [England] team to win a knockout match at a Women’s World Cup.
"We are determined to keep this journey going."
England celebrate Lucy Bronze's winner
Sampson congratulated his match-winner after her audacious 25-yard strike completed England’s comeback and set-up a quarter final tie against host nation Canada on Saturday.
Bronze started the first group match, against France, as a defensive left-winger before being moved back to the more familiar surroundings of right-back against Mexico.
The 23-year-old sat out the 2-1 win over Colombia, but regained her place for the Norway clash.
Sampson said: "I thought [Lucy] was outstanding.
"She has got potential to be the best right-back in the world. The difficult thing for us is we’ve got another right-back [Alex Scott] who is one of the best in the world competing for [the same] jersey.
"There was a lot of pressure on Lucy to step up and perform. I thought she recovered well from the first half where she made a couple of errors which nearly cost us.
Steph Houghton heads home the equaliser against Norway
"But in the second half she showed her character and resilience to produce that type of performance in both boxes.
"She was playing against one of the best aerial threats in this tournament. [Ada] Hegerberg coming in off that left wing is a huge threat and I think that’s the best full-back performance I’ve seen against that winger.
"To get the goal was a huge boost for her and a huge boost for the team. She will take a lot of confidence from that.”
Now Sampson will prepare his side to take on Canada for the second time in just over five weeks, following the 1-0 World Cup warm-up loss in Hamilton at the end of May.
England and Canada have met each other regularly at the annual Cyprus Cup competition over the last few seasons, with the Lionesses beating the Canucks in this year’s final courtesy of Lianne Sanderson’s second-half winner.
And Sampson said he will take a great deal of confidence from that last meeting on the Mediterranean.
He added: "We stated publicly that the Cyprus Cup was a tournament we had to win. If we didn’t win that tournament we wouldn’t have had the belief and the confidence to come here with the belief that we could win this tournament.
"That was a big game for us. We managed it well, we won it.
"We are not going to pay too much attention to [the last game between the sides]. It was an England [side] who were physically not at the ball park, having travelled so close to the game. But we put in a really good shift to restrict Canada to limited opportunities on our goal.
"We [took] a lot of positives from that narrow defeat and the fact we had chances to equalise.
"We’ve got an excellent record against this Canadian team.
"They have got the home crowd, excellent players [and] an excellent manager so we are going to have to produce another massive England performance to get ourselves through to the last four."
