Also, fair play to Saka for putting his hand up to take a pen when it mattered Yeah, it didn't work out, but he had the stones to do it
Says a lot about the team when you have to put two players who have barely kicked a ball all tournament and a young kid on penalty duty.
The racist bastards are already unleashed on Rashfords SM. And you can bet the Mail. / Sun etc will see this as the perfect excuse to attack him and the rest for showing social responsibility and embarrassing the Gov.
Failed to learn from the Spain game, being the team that has come closest to beating Italy on their amazing run. Failed to realise that playing 5-4-1 is never going to win against a team with Italy's midfield. We effectively gave them the initiative. Failed to play to England's strengths - not got enough of our attacking talent on the pitch, and that Grealish does more effective things in 15 minutes than Sterling does in a whole game. And when Grealish wins fouls that also plays to our strength as set pieces. And if Sterling wasn't going to take a pen what the hell was he doing on the pitch at the end. And didn't exploit Italian weaknesses in their ageing centre halves and inexperienced left back.
Bringing on players who have been sat on the bench for almost 3 hours to take pens is unfair too. They need to get warmed up, get used to the conditions and atmosphere and have some time kicking the ball. You’d never bring on a substitute fielder in cricket and put them at first slip, expecting them to catch the ball when their first experience of handling it is at 80 mph off the edge of the bat. Everybody needs some chance to prepare for and adjust to the task in hand whatever they are doing.
It did surprise me that neither Sterling nor Grealish went up, but I guess the identity of the sixth penalty taker will be added to the list of eternal pub debates
On the positive side, you definitely won't have the worst time of it in A&E this week, as you won't have to be explaining to the staff how that flare got up there...
Sorry Gary, but you ****ed it. 5 at the back against an Italian team that you needed to dominate the midfield against? Nope. Sitting back on a 1-0 lead for virtually the whole game? Silly. Subbing on three kids when defending a set-piece for them to take penalties, though? ****ing hell. Sort it out. I'm not going to be too critical of Southgate, as he did well overall and did so while making choices that I disagreed with. Totally ballsed up the final though, for me. Hopefully he'll learn from his mistakes and the press won't crucify anyone too much.
Should've been sent off. Got booked, scored, left the field of play to celebrate. Never going to happen, though.
Convicted criminal Darren Grimes is already whipping up his followers against Rashford From his old room at his mother's house...
Safegate waited too long to change it second half, when everybody could see an Italian equalizer was coming in a matter of minutes. He then brought on the wrong players, Henderson who is clearly not fit and should not have been in the squad and Saka who is too inexperienced for a game of this magnitude. We needed an out ball so why not bring Calvert Lewin on to give the Italian defenders something different to deal with and stick Kane in the hole (where he spent most of his time anyway). I thought Grealish was under used and Southgate also showed too much faith in Mount and Saka, while Henderson contributed nothing apart from wayward passes out into touch in the limited time he was used.
One obvious question about both the Euros and Copa America: barring teams who were an utter disaster (or whose coaches were stepping down anyway) are many teams going to be changing coaches with a World Cup right around the corner? So far only the Dutch and Russia have swung the axe, and I can see a few teams erring until next year
Exactly. Why are Sancho and a kid taking them when we have the PL and CL winning captain of Liverpool there, and the man who takes them for Villa? More disgusting that two lauded captains didn’t step up tbh. Leaving a kid to take the flak. I’m so proud of this team but also absolutely gutted that they fell at the final hurdle. Penalties as well. I don’t want to criticise Southgate too much as he got so many calls right this tournament and is growing as a manager with this group. But he did get the subs at the end wrong and I’m disappointed that the experienced squad members didn’t step up for the pens. It’s an exciting time to be an England fan but I’m shattered this evening.
The only thing I will really lay into Southgate about is the fact that he had one of the best strikers in world football at his disposal yet failed to set the team up to tap into that player's strengths. Kane didn't have the best tournament and looked sluggish on more than one occasion, but if you asked an outsider which players they thought England are built around, they'd have said Sterling and Mount.
