With Italy’s victory on penalties (3-2 after a 1-1 draw) over England this morning, Euro 2020 drew to a close. The Italians are deserving champions, having played excellent football from the moment they kicked off the tournament a month ago with their 3-0 thumping of Turkey. Congratulations to them, and especially to the old guard of Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci who were magnificent at the back throughout the tournament – completely belying their combined age of 70.
England, whose fans have been arrogantly singing “Football’s Coming Home” since the first day of the tournament and have taken to booing their opponents’ national anthems, deservedly lost. It was, as is the truly English way, on penalties, but in truth the game never ought to have gotten that far. Despite their wealth of attacking talent the Poms showed little by way of ambition after Luke Shaw’s volley gave them the lead in the second minute, and they were almost completely confined to their own half by the more adventurous Italians from the twenty-minute mark onwards. Their back three became a back five and Harry Kane up top was increasingly isolated, and well shackled by the old warhorses of Bonucci and Chiellini. The Italian equaliser was a deserved one.
They did, to be fair, improve slightly after changing to a back four, but never really showed the enough ambition to trouble the Italian defence. They seemed to be playing not to lose.
And then came the penalties. Two excellent ones, two poor ones, and one utterly atrocious one. Providing as they did a virtual encyclopedia of how to – and not to – take a penalty, I will write more about them at a later date. The upshot of the rubbish ones, though, was to make Jordan Pickford’s saves from Belotti and Jorginho’s kicks worthless. England, once again, failed to add to their single major trophy of the 1966 World Cup.
This failure is just as I predicted. Admittedly, they did take a bit longer to get around to it than I expected, but then again if you do not count this iteration of Germany as a top-level team (they were pretty sub-par) I was actually right on the money; defeat against the first serious opposition faced.
Gareth Southgate, meanwhile, I described as being a “glorified PE teacher”. Well, that’s what he looked like today as he floundered around with various substitutions throughout the second half of the game and extra time, seemingly under the illusion that he could get his side to attack without actually taking the handbrake off. Hint: he couldn’t. His boy Raheem Sterling was left to flop about on the pitch for the duration, whining for free kicks (although the referee, credit to him, was well wise to that nonsense), while Jack Grealish was given only the last 20 minutes to try to make the difference in place of the ineffectual Mason Mount. His go-to choices instead were a teenager in Bukayo Saka and a like-for-like swap of Jordan Henderson for Declan Rice in the engine room. Clueless.
Then there is the matter of the penalties. To say that Southgate left it late to make his last couple of changes and bring on some of the squad’s better takers is an understatement; Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford were introduced in the midst of defending a corner (a big no-no) with less than 60 seconds to play. It was thus no surprise that, essentially taking them completely cold, they both missed their kicks.
And so we come, finally, come to what is in my view Southgate’s biggest mistake of the lot: his decision to place the pressure of England’s vital fifth penalty in the shootout on the 19-year-old shoulders of Bukayo Saka rather than on those of a senior player. Sterling, Stones, and Grealish were surely all better options for such a task. Indeed, Saka’s wish to be anywhere but where he was was clear on his face as he made the walk from halfway.
And on his kick the game was lost.
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