Congratulations to Italy, clearly the best team in the tournament and in this game. Very proud of my England team in this tournament. Heartbreaking way to lose, but the reality is we were simply too cautious in our approach to this game.
Congratulations to Italy, @Brasitusa and other Italian fans. Italy marked themselves as among the top favorites early in the tournament, played well throughout, and never stumbled enough to fall. And they managed to lift the Euro championship in Wembley being the better side against the home team. Kudos to the Italians team for a job well done.
Commiserations but England have a great future ahead of them with an exciting young team. I'm sure this is just the beginning
IMO, England's best chance of winning this game after Italy deservedly tied it up was on the penalty lottery. The fact that they lost the lottery doesn't change it. Having said that, perhaps England could have taken more chances once the Italian player causing them the most trouble, namely Chiesa, had to come off. Even then, however, I don't think England could have improved their odds over the odds they would have in a penalty shootout.
The goal came too early for England. They shouldve continued to press forward but with 5 at the back its not easy. What where the shots after 90 mins. 13-2 for Italy ? Englands 0.6xg in the match says it all. 0,6! let that sink Italy 2.23xg
The shots after 120 minutes were 20-6 for Italy. Possession was 62% for Italy. Yes, we did play better. It was looking like we'd score the second goal if Chiesa hadn't collected an injury.
England have probably blown their chances of their joint bid with Ireland for WC 2030, poor security at the ground and fan behaviour, booing anthems etc. Spain and Portugal would be more fun anyway.
Dreaming Spain/Portugal will win the bid! https://www.firstpost.com/sports/sp...-official-bid-for-2030-world-cup-9686741.html
It felt like England were happy to settle for 1:0 and this shows heavily in the stats. They were the same after scoring the second against Denmark, where Denmark were able to push forward and look dangerous even with only 10 men on the pitch. I think it would have been a different game had England not scored so early but, as an England fan, I wasn't inspired by the football they offered, and Italy grew as the game went on. I suppose had England held on, or even won on penalties, Southgate would have been lauded for his tactics, but they didn't and negative tactics cost them in the end. Can't wait for the 'proper' football to start.
yes but I doubt they can pull it off $$$$$. Been to Argentina and watched 12 matches in Buenos Aires. I like old stadiums with proper history but they have to build everything from scratch. Highbury over Emirates every day of the week
P.S. 2/2 bottles thrown, people karate kicking windows and (a new one for me) had to jump out of the way of an armed officer with his gun drawn chasing someone. Transport non-existent, roads gridlocked for hours, behaviour of many despicable. Wembley Way a bombsite. Awful, awful night— Mike Keegan (@MikeKeegan_DM) July 12, 2021
Far be it from me to give credit to slate on any kind of soccer coverage but I thought their journo nailed it when he called Southgate's approach, the Floyd Mayweather approach to these games, and especially the final. That really summed it up, in my amateur analysis, it was England's version of catenaccio, grab the goal, and shut the door, and it sucked. It worked because their path didn't include France, Belgium, or Italy until they made the final (I guess you could add Spain, for when Spain finally periodically showed up in handfuls of games). It nearly cost them against Germany, but other than Germany, they didn't face a legit powerhouse attack all tournament, and the conservative approach kept producing results so they kept going with it, but then Italy, without Spinazzola finally found that skeleton key in the second half and that was it. To have the wealth of attacking options they have, more than a half dozen certainly and sit more than half of them, just piles and piles of them, for the sake of these 1-0 skin of your teeth performances was just a horror to watch. When you win, the "W or L" critics will let you off when it doesn't look like it's close to maximizing your team potential. 1-0 is a win just as 4-0 or 6-0 is after all, but when you lose, the knives will rightfully be out. When you're most talented players are in the attack, why are they playing second fiddle entirely to defensive organization, and stoutness? Why are you sitting so many talented players over and over, playing for 1-0 over and over again? You do realize that Ukraine, Scotland, Czech, a largely toothless Croatia until their last pair of matches aren't good? You just saw France go basically 327 minutes (the entire group stage, and 57 minutes of the Swiss R16 debacle) scoring all of 2 goals in the run of play (not including the pen or the own goal) using the same kind of conservative, batten down the hatches approach and all it did was get them booted against Switzerland despite having about 10x the talent of them and about 5x the talent as the other best four or five sides in the tourney combined in the pool (slight hyperbole I know). The warning signs were there. You got a weaker Italy, with no Spinazzola, and even weaker still when Chiesa went down but nope, he had to be conservative till the end, then, lol, he got radical and subbed on a couple of attacking players that didn't even get a chance to get warm in the game for penalties and the biggest moment of their career. As a USMNT fan with our best pool ever, having a clown at the wheel in Berhalter, instead of the best coaches of this American era at the helm (Bradley, Arena etc) or even better a legit world talent, is beyond infuriating. We've got ourselves a Maserati as I like to say, but the coach drives it like it's a Ford Pinto. I fear England has a similar situation. There's no arguing his results, top 3 finish at WC '18, and the first final in 55 years for England this time through. The problem is: do you really think he's getting the best performances out of the talent pool? I absolutely know without question that Egg isn't with the USMNT, heck as last night can attest. While you can't say that in terms of wins and losses, I can't help but think if on a 23 alone you have: Kane Sterling Rashford Grealish Mount Sancho Foden Bellingham Heck Chillwell can't get off the bench after helping lead Chelsea to a Champions League Final, and all you can do is tie Scotland, and register a bunch of 1 goal victories against Croatia and the Czech's, struggle murderously to score against Germany and Denmark despite playing at home the whole time. I don't know what England should do, I just know what they have. A wealth of talent I've never seen at this scale ever with England (I'm 46), and it's being wasted in such a conservative, risk averse approach. I pray Southgate looks at this, looks what happened to France etc, and gets that the can play defense, he can press, and he can also attack beautifully with the wealth of talent he has, and actually do it 17 months from now. Your team is young England, you've got 2-3 World Cups to do something about this, and another 2 Euro's, it can be done (though I'd hate for it to be done considering the contempt I hold for your fan base), it would suck to waste this generation. For all the trashing of Belgium, they did basically maximize their talent for the most part in '14, '18 and '20, it's '16 they should gnash their teeth about. I hope they take their lessons well from this, rather than retrench into the conservative at all cost approach that in part, probably cost them the Euro's this time around.
I think part of it was the ordering as well, you don't want to give a bunch of kiddos the 3, 4, 5, I think I would've put Kane and Sterling 1 and 5, or 5 and 1, filled out the other 3 with a Rashford, and probably like you said maybe Walker, Henderson, whatever. You want confident, low anxiety, chill, leader types at 1 and 5, always. After the 5th it's largely a roll of the dice. I just had a lot of issues with him the whole tournament. He did a great job of just taking this team through a relatively easy path nearly entirely at home, but I think he became too comfortable with his defensive, shut it down approach, and it cost them. Italy scored 7 goals in the group stage, and another 4 in the tougher side of the bracket against teams like Belgium, Spain and erm, Austria, and only 1 of those goals was an own goal/penalty. Expecting to keep them from putting the ball in the net in 90+ injury time when they haven't gone down in defeat in a qualifier or tournament game since freaking 2017 was insane and yet it seemed to be his game plan. Very happy he continued with this dunderheadedness, but it is unfortunate for England that he did.
No, it totally makes sense, it's just important that players and coaches be honest, and not afraid of being honest in the moment. We all know when we're confident and when we're not, when we're tired and when we're not and I'm sure the majority of them know the same. Hopefully this wasn't him just filling out the list, but really taking into account who felt up to it and who didn't, because penalties are basically about confidence, technique, fatigue and anxiety, and the wrong weighting of those things can cause a lot of craziness. You know the drastically differing rates of conversion when it comes to players during regular time, and following extra time.
I do think people pointing at England being cursed or crappy at penalties is kind of nonsense, there were plenty of bad penalties on both sides. Italy Penalty #1 would've been saved if Pickford guessed right. Italy Penalty #2 was saved England Penalty #3 hit the post Italy Penalty #4 was right down the middle and savable. England Penalty #4 was savable. Italy Penalty #5 was saved beautifully. What it came down in the end was that Italy's keeper guessed right one more time than Pickford did on poor shots. I give Italy basically 1 great penalty out of 5 if I remember right, and England 2 great penalties out of 5, and then it was just down to guessing right and saving what was savable, and Italy guessed right one more time.
One would think so. Granted FIFA upped the IOC's Bribe standard of hookers, money and coke, to hookers, money, and corporate contracts for nation votes, but after this horrid display, I think they flushed their chances. What a bunch of scumbags ruining it for the rest of the country.
It will be interesting to see what punishment they get, made the Hungarians look like choirboys. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ungary-for-fans-racist-behaviour-at-euro-2020
Hi all, Long time lurker here but never joined until now. Just joined basically to say Congratulations Italia! Great team who definitely deserved to beat us in the final and probably the most deserving of the trophy over the course of the tournament too. I've really enjoyed watching them throughout the tournament. Particularly enjoyed seeing Spinazzolla celebrating always hate watching a player on the top of his game go down injured. Although was a bit harsh the Italy players running towards their fans whilst Spinazzola had to hop to them on crutches . Couldnt they carry him or better yet they should have got that Matchball bringing VW car on and sat him on it From England's point of view we weren't bold and brave enough with and without the ball. I thought it was telling we only had 1 yellow card to Italy's 5. They battled harder then us we sat off too passively. Think the problem is our defense is not the best for high press and we are desperately lacking that deep lying playmaker in midfield (POGBA/ KROOS/ JORINGHIO etc) so I can see the logic by the tactics but you cant win anything doing that. Hopefully Bellingham can develop into something like a Pogba and we really will have a teams for the next 2 or 3 tournaments Feel we do have a bright future ahead though and we have managed to get a few monkeys off our backs over the last 3 years (winning 2 shootouts). Winning our first European championship opening game finally beating Germany in a knockout game and getting to our first final in 55 years. Anyways enjoy the win Italy. After a tough 18 months with Covid for everyone around the world glad you guys have this to perhaps help try and get over those months.
Experience of a neutral at the game from another forum. " I was at the match last night with my 12-year old son, and while we enjoyed the game, the rest was utter chaos. My son and I arrived at our entrance point (Entrance 1) in plenty of time, and joined a sea (the shapeless mass couldn’t be described as a queue) of thousands of bodies swarming towards the entry points. Once you were absorbed by the throng there was no way back - people were crushing in from all sides. I almost went hoarse from shouting at people not to push forward - there were loads of children in the middle of the scrum and I genuinely thought there was a danger of another Hillsborough the way things were going -, but to no avail. I can only hope no-one got hurt. There were lots of decent England fans amongst the crowd, but the rogue element was high. ‘Fans’ were pushing from all directions with no regard for the safety of those caught in the middle; other ‘fans’ were throwing beer over the crowd, soaking everyone, with cans and bottles flying everywhere. Yet more ‘fans’ were scaling the walls in their dozens to get into the stadium without passing the entrance points. All this behaviour would be imbecilic at the best of times, but as we emerge from a pandemic it was almost beyond belief. After nearly an hour of being crushed from all sides, we were finally swept through the entrances by the sheer pressure of the crowd, by which time the stewards had more or less given up trying to activate the match tickets (let alone check Covid certification etc.). I got my ticket checked (only by holding my phone out in the general direction of a scanner, not due to any intervention by a steward), but my son was pushed over the mess of bent and fallen barriers by the pressure behind, with no chance to get his ticket scanned. Once inside, we realised that it was a a two step activation process, with the second step to be triggered at the turnstiles, so if you hadn’t had your ticket activated at the entrance point you couldn’t access the QR code needed to get in at the turnstile. We pushed back against the crowd to get back to the entrance point, but the stewards were unable to help, and we finally discovered helpful UEFA staff who were able to activate my son’s phone, and we were eventually able to join the lengthy queues at gate G. Of course the result of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people swarming in at the entrance points without getting their tickets activated meant huge delays at the turnstiles. In the time we queued at Gate G (at least 30 mins) there were no less than FOUR occasions where people within the stadium flung open the fire doors and large numbers of ticketless idiots swarmed towards the open doors. Able-bodied people were also trying to storm the disabled access points. Simply beyond belief. The Times today estimated that 400 fans got into the game without tickets. From what we saw and experienced, I suspect their estimate is on the (very) low side. The complicated entrance protocols (three-pronged checks on Covid certification, match tickets and ID, none of which actually happened for us as we were swept past the entrance barriers) were always going to cause severe delays and in the context of a 75% crowd might just about have been workable, without the substantial Neanderthal contingent attempting to force their way in. The police presence was surprisingly low key for a match of this scale (there were no police at all within the stadium perimeter), and the stewards were either incapable, unwilling or simply too overpowered to fix the problem. It took ages to close the doors, and they were soon thrown open again. This looked like co-ordinated criminal behaviour by an determined element of idiots, though The Times is reporting today that stewards were opening fire doors to evict intruders, then being overpowered by a fresh surge of non-ticket holders. Once inside the stadium it was almost inevitable that our seats would be occupied by non-ticket holders. Luckily they moved when asked, but it was clear that the section we were in was not 75% full, in line with the overall 75% capacity limit, but was actually close to 100% (or more) with 4 people standing in the 3 seats in front of us and people standing in the back and in the aisles. Contrary to media reports, the rogue behaviour we witnessed was not committed by a ‘tiny minority.’ It was a minority, but a very significant one. To be fair, there were many England fans who were absolutely disgusted by the behaviour of their compatriots, and there were loud choruses of boos every time a fire door was thrown open, with packs of idiots surging towards it. There were numerous England fans around me who were asking if my son (and other kids) was ok during the crushes. To be honest, I feel sorry for the majority of England fans whose reputation is constantly trashed by the abject behaviour of the idiotic minority. Those fans are an utter liability, and if I were English I’d have given up supporting the national team by now. FWIW, I didn’t hear any booing of taking the knee (only applause) or any sign of racist abuse where I was, but the constant booing of every Italian touch was utterly tedious. The England songbook was disappointingly limited - they only seem to have two songs - one about the massive size of Harry Maguire’s head and the other about ‘Scotland getting battered everywhere they go’ (apart from at Wembley presumably). Quite a contrast between the antiseptic experience of nursing a cup of lukewarm after for 3 hours before the Scotland v Czech Republic game at Hampden and last night’s chaos in London. I generally find that an enjoyable football experience falls somewhere between the two extremes. As far as the game itself goes, Italy were deserved winners. It was a decent effort from England, but they were outclassed - players of the quality of Insigne are an joy to watch and Italy’s centre back pairing (Chiellini and Bonucci) are a cut above. The first touch of every Italian player was a sublime, and they absolutely bossed the match and thoroughly deserved to win."
Yeah I thought Pickford did well. Especially that Jorginho save where he knew to wait as late as possible follow the ball and hope Jorginho didnt get a great connection (with those slow 'run up jumps' they normally dont connect great tbf as it makes it much more difficult to connect well with accuracy). Rashford was just a little unlucky as he made Donnarumma go the wrong way but didn't hit it quite right. Saka and Sancho's penalties weren't great but keeper just guessed right Penalties at the end of the day always have much more luck involved in them they the rest of the game so i never like to criticise players who step up to take them.
Good point. Perhaps the biggest lesson (after Lesson #1 of PKs: England always loses) is soccer should again consider using the tennis tiebreak method for taking turns. In tennis, after Rashford's miss, England would "serve" again, getting a chance with the score tied to go first and get ahead. Instead the advantage of going first automatically reverted to Italy and after Bernardeschi made his PK, the pressure was again on England's PK takers to play catch-up I just posted a poll in the forum and I included a link to a women's match between Sweden and Canada in 2019 which I believe was the first match involving senior teams to use the tennis tiebreak system.