Final: Italy vs England

Its coming Romeeeee!! Football won today, no dodgy Pen, blind referee and VAR deciding the game
 
Every statistic points to an Italy win. Southgate was a coward most of the tournament. A home game with fantastic support and he made it hard for the players to win.
 
Eternitiy said:
Manchester United should have beaten Villarreal.
England should have beaten Italy.

The difference was the managers, as you've said. Emery and Mancini thoroughly outclassed Ole and Southgate despite the latter two having more talent at their disposal. It was so infuriating as a fan to watch powerless as your manager stands reactionless to a game that really should not have gone to penalties.
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Amen
 
Bringing Saka on was such a woeful decision. Didn't see what he brought to us at all. He's so clearly immature in his play still, and predictably so and fair enough he's so young. Southgate's faith in him is misplaced right now. Should never have finished the game, let alone take the crucial pen.
 
FCBarcelona said:
I'm not surprised you get bored reading more than 2 lines. Not surprising at all!



No, it's not my responsability and I don't care if we need to sell the fecking stadium to pay the debts created by the thief we had in charge before. It is only fair. I'm not a hooligan.
Besides, the problem is not "not having money" (well, not only), the problem are some LaLiga rules that punishes you in some cases. But this is not a thread to talk about that.

This is a thread to talk about the European Championship final.
Italy deserved by 100 miles to win over England.
The reasons? the horrendous football England proposed. Can you talk about that? about the fact that you play a final in your stadium against a team with less quality and you play with 8 defensive players? that you sit back for 120 minutes hoping for random goal from your top players?

Football won today. You like it or not. And it has nothing to do with United, Barça or the NBA.
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Again, wasted. Imagine being a fan of a Spanish club and spending so much time on a United forum.
 
Apparently Kane didn't have a touch in the penalty box all game. That can't be right, surely?
 
People keep saying football won today. Italy looked more like they were MMA fighters out there than footballers.
 
JB08 said:
Why on earth people are insinuating Southgate 'forced' Saka to take a penalty I have no idea. He obviously volunteered.
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It doesn't matter if he volunteered, you overrule him - at the very least, you don't have him as the joint most pressurised taker of the lot. Further to that, Saka had a poor game, so even if he'd been good in training with pens, you have to factor in the whole, and not just cherry-pick what you want.

That's appalling management.
 
Eternitiy said:
Manchester United should have beaten Villarreal.
England should have beaten Italy.

The difference was the managers, as you've said. Emery and Mancini thoroughly outclassed Ole and Southgate despite the latter two having more talent at their disposal. It was so infuriating as a fan to watch powerless as your manager stands reactionless to a game that really should not have gone to penalties.
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This. Italy under an Ole/Southgate didn't even qualify for the WC. That's why Sir Alex used to describe the manager's role as the most important job in football
 
Swoobs said:
Its coming Romeeeee!! Football won today, no dodgy Pen, blind referee and VAR deciding the game
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Ironic choice of words considering Italy finished the game with 11 players on the pitch
 
Sultan said:
Every statistic points to an Italy win. Southgate was a coward most of the tournament. A home game with fantastic support and he made it hard for the players to win.
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England could have won with a braver manager. Could, not would. The road not travelled is a bitter pill to swallow.
 
Fortitude said:
It doesn't matter if he volunteered, you overrule him - at the very least, you don't have him as the joint most pressurised taker of the lot. Further to that, Saka had a poor game, so even if he'd been good in training with pens, you have to factor in the whole, and not just cherry-pick what you want.

That's appalling management.
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Southgate has said he picked him to take a penalty.
 
FCBarcelona said:
I'm not surprised you get bored reading more than 2 lines. Not surprising at all!



No, it's not my responsability and I don't care if we need to sell the fecking stadium to pay the debts created by the thief we had in charge before. It is only fair. I'm not a hooligan.
Besides, the problem is not "not having money" (well, not only), the problem are some LaLiga rules that punishes you in some cases. But this is not a thread to talk about that.

This is a thread to talk about the European Championship final.
Italy deserved by 100 miles to win over England.
The reasons? the horrendous football England proposed. Can you talk about that? about the fact that you play a final in your stadium against a team with less quality and you play with 8 defensive players? that you sit back for 120 minutes hoping for random goal from your top players?

Football won today. You like it or not. And it has nothing to do with United, Barça or the NBA.
Click to expand...

I hope you are not a Spain fan because if you are, there is some irony there considering Spain bored everyone to death with their tika taka football.
 
Saka should never have been on the pitch at all, never mind taking a penalty.

The semi-final proved too much for him, and its really , really poor from southgate putting him in that position.

Manager lost this game. Some fo the players didn't perform as they should, but we have the squad to cope with that.

We just didn;t have a manager brave enough to do so.
 
Nearly a carbon copy of last world cup semifinal vs Croatia with the difference we finished England of before the pens.
 
United Hobbit said:
He's barely used Sancho all tournament too. I thought I'd seen Sterling take them for City and I presume Henderson does for Liverpool if Milner not there? Grealish does he take them for Villa? Where was he?

What harm would giving Rashy and Sancho the last 10 minutes of extra time have done to get them up to speed?
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I have no idea why the order was chosen it didn’t make sense that 2 out of the 5 takers on your team played a combined total of 4 minutes.

It makes even less sense when the average age of the last 3 is 20-21 years old

Whilst having more experienced players on the pitch.

Crazy tactics from the get go and the decisions only got worse.
 
Withnail said:
Eh? Rashford does that all the time and he sent the keeper the wrong way, he was just inaccurate with the shot. That could be put down to the fact that he hardly played and barely got 3 minutes on the pitch today.
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The playing time is only one part of the equation. The penalty technique that uses stutter steps has been an embarrassment for many since it became mainstream. If you take penalties, you better go Shearer or Van Nistelrooy if you want to get good at those.
 
Red_Aaron said:
After a perfect start we handed all the initiative to Italy and gave them all the time to figure it out.

Someone mentioned italys poor bench options compared to England's but bench options are irrelevant if you don't use them.

Italy used theirs, they changed shape, they changed approach, they actively sought to win the game whilst England were intent only on grinding the game out.

Why not give rashford and sancho at least the last 15 to run at their aged defence? Rashford has played what 5-10mins all tourney! But give him a crucial penalty in the final, great idea that
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It's inconceivable to watch that first half and not think; hmm Italy are really good at congesting the pitch, who do I have that are good at creating in tight spaces (Grealish and Sancho). Grealish came on eventually - too late, but at least he came on, and Sancho has just been ignored all tournament.
 
I guess the mighty Grealish didn't want to take the shine off the 19yr Saka. I'd forgive Sterling he's been carrying this England side throughout the tournament but you'd think this would have been the opportune time for Grealish to cement this mythical greatness built around him but alas.
Also Southgate should have brought on Rashford and Sancho a lot earlier to get them warmed up into the game. Just 3 mins to a vital pen shootout is crazy decision. I blame him.
 
Nani Nana said:
He actually did, stop spouting nonsense.

Belotti and Jorginho missed despite playing a sizeable part of the match.

This was a lottery, as any penalty shootout
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People need to stop saying penalties are a lottery, they’re really not. It’s a test or mental strength in the most testing of circumstances and our lads failed

I don’t blame the players for the penalties misses but the final of a major international tournament is not the time to mess about with a run up
 
FreakyJim said:
Don't worry, I'm not some twitter idiot, not going to send him messages. Just saying he made a mistake the way he took it. Sancho's penalty was also shit but I feel Rashford put additional pressure on himself.
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Nah it's alright. Southgate deserves the flak here. Can't expect these two players (who he's not picked all tournament) to come on and win them the game with 1 minute remaining.

The pressure must have been immense on both Sancho and Rashy.
 
So if Grealish and Sterling weren’t taking pens anyway then why didn’t Rashford and Sancho come on earlier? And why send a CB 2nd (glad he scored, but still weird to send him so early to take a pen) and then why Saka at all and especially the crucial penalty?
But the most important question is why let it get to pens against Italy? Why not try to win it in 90/120 mins?
Anyway best team of the tournament won, deserved winners.
 
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