This was England’s chance. At the World Cup there will be some very strong sides, alongside a better coached German team, so I don’t see England go very far.
BTW, it was to be expected, but still absolutely horrifying to read so many racist Twitter and Instagram comments against the guys who missed the penalties. English fans don’t deserve to have a happy end at a tournament.
It was absolutely surreal he put in Rashford and Sancho that late. Especially as Italy were exerting their will on the game from 50th min on.
And to use Sancho so little in the tournament. Just unreal.
Southgate is very popular among the general public. A recent poll in the UK showed him with higher favorability ratings than Churchill.
He is a good and likeable man which helps with his work and leadership influencing societal issues. Just to focus on the football though I think he is a great man-manager in how he brings through young players and helps develop them. On that score he has totally changed the culture of the England team but tactically he has clear flaws to work on leading up to next year’s World Cup. I think in this game Italy’s experience rode out the youthful exuberance of England after the first 30 minutes and the Italians just played a smarter game going through the gears whereas England stayed in one gear. In extra time England were back on the front foot in the first 15 minutes and the game was there to be won with his subs in the second 15 minutes. Against old and tired Italian defenders he could have gambled to try and win it in open play but he waited too long to make the subs until right to the end when penalties was going to happen.
You can’t blame players for missing penalties and if you’re going to lose on penalties it’s better to have three miss than have one sole victim who gets made to be a culprit by the English media as Gareth Southgate has suffered for 25 years. It’s a shame because it would have been a lovely redemption story but instead it’s a nightmare.
I would maybe dispute them slightly, but these are reasonable statements. But then you add Pickford, who is, let’s say, not obviously world class, and that’s not really a team that wins the European championship, is it? Forward options that are very good, a midfield that is eh, defenders that are fine, and a keeper that isn’t going to save them… that just doesn’t sound like a team that’s good enough, which also matches what I’ve seen from them, and obviously is consistent with the results most of the time. You’re not going to bench Kane, you’ll be criticized for whoever you don’t play alongside him if the ones you do play don’t produce, and then the rest of your squad is just competent. You can’t play four fullbacks and four wingers.
Just as a comparison that is easy to make: Kane/Mount (or Sancho)/Sterling is not obviously better than Lukaku/KDB/Doku (or Mertens, or Eden Hazard every three matches), is it? And if not, is there an argument that England has the advantage over Belgium with the rest of the squads? Or same questions with Ronaldo/Bernardo/Jota (or Joao Felix) and Portugal’s supporting cast. They just don’t look as good as these other teams on paper, and I think everyone would have said that was the case before the tournament.
So I think if ten minutes before the tournament started you offered English fans that hey, Southgate will get you to penalties in the final, are you happy with him under those circumstances, 99.99997% would say yes, if he does that it’s brilliant of him. I don’t see where the tactics are a big problem.
Was pulling for Blighty / Engerland.
Thirty years of hurt, lol. This song came out, what, 25 years ago?
Where’s George Best when you need him? Oh yeah, at that big sky bar in heaven.
Pickford looked excellent today.
Deserved win for Italy, which we know isn’t always the case with a PK shootout. But awful PK sequence by Southgate. Can’t see the logic in slating 23-, 21- and 19-year olds, for the highest pressure 3rd, 4th and 5th kicks. Two of them just entered the game in the 120th minute, so were not even warmed up. I feel he had the sequence exactly backwards. Meanwhile Mancini’s youngest taker was 26 (although they had 2 misses as well).
How about next door. the Chilean Pelegrini? Behind Man City and West Ham, so somewhat knows the lie of the land, despite, sure, only a 39% win rate while in The Land of Bubbles.
Poor Pickford. He played out of his mind today, especially two magnificent saves, only to see 3 England kicks missed. (I don’t blame the last two but the first miss - to hit the POST when Donnarumma was going the OTHER way - is inexcusable.)
Harry Kane went missing the whole fucking night. Third time in a major game, the Croatia SF, the 2019 CL Final and now this,
Sterling was the only attacking threat, but the Italians dealt with him by beating him like a bastard stepchild.
Southgate’s safe, he’s massively popular, and he’s achieved a semi and a final in the last two major tournaments. There’s no shame to losing on penalties.
Italy were the better team this time and deserved the win, but England is a young team with great spirit. It’s a positive sign for the future.
I don’t think England’s roster makes them favorites over Belgium or Portugal, but I think the talent levels are comparable based solely on that should expect roughly to split points.
And as far as getting to the finals, that’s gotta be like 80% due to their incredibly easy draw rather than Southgate getting them to play well. Getting a phantom penalty to beat Denmark without their best player isn’t terribly inspiring. The 2018 semi-finals are even less impressive, IMO, since at least they had to beat Germany this time. In 2018 they played in 3 matches against a good team and lost all 3. I mean, yeah, England aren’t as complete choke jobs as they were the previous 20 years, but that’s not saying much.
Agreed and this was a declined German side, nowhere near as impressive a win as it would have been even 2 years ago.
Actually, between 1990 and 2018 (when the Southgate “revolution”) started their major tournaments were:
Before Southgate, England had 5 tournaments where they lost to either the winner or the Runner up and in two other defeats they lost to a major talented team.
Some teams just ran into the one team of the tournament better then them, in earlier rounds, like the 2002 WC team.
Southgate’s men never seem to face a good team until late in the tournament where they fail.
I didn’t understand starting Trippier when two other fullbacks were also in the lineup, especially after Foden never stepped onto the pitch. But it actually seemed to work for most of the game.
I also think you could make a case for Chiesa as tournament MVP or whatever they call it.
England (fans and media) thinks it is a top tier team, and it isn’t. It gets through on good luck and good draws and it got the furthest than it’s got for a while. The problem is that they expect to be in the final, and mostly win it, when it’s such a long shot, really. And the media never appreciates how well they’ve done when they’ve lost either.
Saying that (I didn’t watch the game last night), watching Denmark they were much more solid a team (vs “pass it to Rooney/Beckham”) than in recent years.
Unfortunately they are unlikely to get many more home games for a while. The amount of things which went wrong last night policing, with riots in central london, fighting outside the stadium for hours before the match, crowds forcing their way into the stadium without tickets, and Italian fans being attacked on the way out, they can’t secure the venues anymore, especially with the racism fueled by Brexit making the worst of the fans more bold.
Our home secretary, in charge of the police, criticised the team for taking the knee, in effect backing the worst fans. How one of the most organised anti-football-violence police forces in world let that happens asks questions of a will to keep these under control. There were parts of London sitting in the dark, doors barred last night.
I don’t understand the beating up on England thing. This is the day after they not only got to the Euro final, but lost by the narrowest possible margin.
If any team had done this we would be giving them credit right now, but for some reason it’s a tradition to point out how bad the England team really is and say they are being overhyped and were just “lucky”.
I wouldn’t say that England is playing the beautiful game, but it’s not a beauty contest. There are certain fundamentals that England executed pretty well in this tournament, and for at least the first half of the final.
I assume we’re all happy to say Italy is the best or nearly best team in Europe right now, so how can England be so bad while almost beating Italy? Oh yeah, “luck”. 
I have to agree with Mijin. You’re saying them winning the final is “such a long shot” but it sure didn’t look that unlikely to me in the PK phase.
They did very well. It was a long shot to get there. Yes, they had a chance of winning, but they were definitely not the favourites or expected to make it that far.
The attitude of the UK press has, for a long time, been “we’re world class and should be winners” when in reality it should be “We have done REALLY well to get here, and win or lose, celebrate it”.
This is the attitude that means those who missed the penalties will get abuse for the next year. Southgate himself was a victim of this abuse back when he missed a penalty back in the 90s.
It’s like that in Argentina too, with somewhat more justification, but still hurts us by exacerbating the problem I mentioned above, if you are the manager of the Selección you have to win everything, and you better win it convincently or there will be words about wether it’s worth it to keep you there.