Final: Italy vs England

[hmchan]

Spain should arguably have been in the final ahead of Italy from their semi-final, if you're going on the basis of deserved being a reflection of the balance of play. Until football results are partly determined by judges awarding for artistic merit, 'deserved' will remain a frustrating way of explaining things. Once the match ends, the shoot-out is a different event, like having to switch from the long jump to the high jump in the decathlon. The first event between the two sides couldn't produce a winner, but Italy won the next event, so they effectively won the whole contest 1-0, if you like. They deserved to win because they were demonstrably measurably better at one of the two events contested. What we really need is a less frustrating 'event' to decide the results of huge matches that end all-square after extra-time!

People nowadays tend to think the team with more possession is the better team and deserves to win. It is not.

 

[DomesticTadpole]

People nowadays tend to think the team with more possession is the better team and deserves to win. It is not.

Spain had plenty of chances, what they didn't have was someone to convert them. They caused Italy real problems. We didn't.

 

[El Zoido]

The funny thing is, I thought the Italians looked gassed in ET. Rashford and Sancho could have done serious damage.

It was the same against Denmark, they were completely shot of energy, and he brought on Foden and Henderson. I was saying in the match thread at the time, why not bring on Rashford and Sancho and go for the kill. We got a dodgy penalty but could easily have lost in the shootout as we did last night.

 

[carvajal]

I am sorry for your disappointment, in life I have not seen Spain or Madrid lose such an important final, so I do not know that feeling, and especially when the party is ready...
I didn't see the first half but Italy was much better in the second. They passed the ball between the lines with great ease. The English midfield was very solid throughout the tournament, so I don't think it's simply a problem of dominating the midfield or not, but the team being too much defensive.
From the English, exponents of this current football of intensity and pressure, I expected something like this in the final, overwhelming Italy.
I really liked Chiesa. In a parallel world with galácticos would be a must for his great game

 

[Klopper76]

Thinking about the game after a night to sleep on it, I think England were fairly comfortable in the first half. Handled pretty much everything Italy had to offer without any major issues.

My problem with Southgate is that he waited to make a significant change until after Italy had scored. You could tell 10 minutes into that second half that Italy had complete control and England had no way to ease the pressure. I think around 55 minutes in was the time to change the shape and try to find ways to counter. Kane had no chance with the balls Pickford was lumping up to him.

Disappointing but hopefully Southgate learns from this.

 

[RazorOz]

Still not getting over of how Southgate allowed Saka, that kid, to take the last kick! So unfair on that poor kid. Usually most reliable shooters take first and the last penalty. Then he picked Sancho who is not even a regular penalty shooter for Dortmund. Again, why??

Sancho was Dortmund's penalty taker at the end of last season.

 

[bosskeano]

Southgate got scared and bottled it. He set up too defensively, he put shackles on all that attacking talent(sterling, kane, sancho, rashford, grealish, foden) and he made terrible substitution decisions in the final as it looked like he had no plan in place to go to penalties.

 

[Ixion]

It wasn't too dissimilar to our Europa League Final. No plan B, scared to make any changes while the opposition gets more into the game and uses their subs, accept penalties with ages to go. Of course our opponent's were much worse but Ole and Southgate's shortcoming are pretty similar.

 

[bosskeano]

It wasn't too dissimilar to our Europa League Final. No plan B, scared to make any changes while the opposition gets more into the game and uses their subs, accept penalties with ages to go. Of course our opponent's were much worse but Ole and Southgate's shortcoming are pretty similar.

Ole doesn't or didn't have the same level of bench options that Southgate was afforded

 

[Ixion]

Ole doesn't or didn't have the same level of bench options that Southgate was afforded

I don't think Villarreal did either but they went to their bench plenty and ended up controlling the game. Pretty sure Villarreal would have used the subs we had on the bench too.

 

[VeevaVee]

Dunno where to put this, but it’s great

 

[hmchan]

I am sorry for your disappointment, in life I have not seen Spain or Madrid lose such an important final, so I do not know that feeling, and especially when the party is ready...
I didn't see the first half but Italy was much better in the second. They passed the ball between the lines with great ease. The English midfield was very solid throughout the tournament, so I don't think it's simply a problem of dominating the midfield or not, but the team being too much defensive.
From the English, exponents of this current football of intensity and pressure, I expected something like this in the final, overwhelming Italy.
I really liked Chiesa. In a parallel world with galácticos would be a must for his great game

Philips and Rice won almost every battle against the Italian midifeld in the first half, the latter even broke forward a few times single-handedly. They just lost their advantage when their energy dropped, and Southgate's (lack of) game management didn't help either.

 

[Longshanks]

Even at the end of the first half Italy were beginning to dominate. Our issue was that sterling, kane and Mount were coming so deep to help with defending that we had no out, it was to congested to play out because near enough every player was in our half and our attempts to go long were pointless as quite often there was noone to even try and hit.

Tactical diasasterclass in the 2nd half, we needed to be braver, surely the reason to pick a back 5 and two holding players is so that your forwards don't have to come back and defend. Sterling and mounts should of stayed as high and wide as possible when we were defending with kane dropping slightly deeper to link up. Instead we ended up with all three of them coming back tracking players and noone in a offensive role and allowed Italy to push right up with no danger of anyone running in behind.

The really annoying thing was that all Southgate had to do was get a simple instruction to the wide forwards to not track and stay high and wide and be the out ball and Italy might of just taken a step back and then we might of been able to get the ball down and play our way out aswell and wrestle some control and possession back.

Did Southgate really belive we will just see the italians off no problem without still posing some sort of threat?

 

[DixieDean]

I realize I'm posting this after England lost, but The Euro's/World Cup finals should go to a replay before pens.

 

[croadyman]

Didn't realise until I looked it up again just how close together Bonucci's & Perisic's equalising goals were to each other, one was in the 67th minute and the other in the 68th minute. The performances are so similar as well with England coming out on the wrong end of the result both times for exactly the same reason.

 

[The Oracle]

From the fallout of losing the Final to Italy, the missed penalties have been critiqued, and the England players that missed theirs have been racially abused...
Rashford, Sancho, and Saka

First and foremost the racial abuse is abhorrent and shows the truly awful nature of some people. The Police should use all of their powers of investigation to identify the people responsible and bring them to justice.

Racism should not be tolerated anywhere.


The second most important issue was the football.

 

[DixieDean]

Didn't realise until I looked it up again just how close together Bonucci's & Perisic's equalising goals were to each other, one was in the 67th minute and the other in the 68th minute. The performances are so similar as well with England coming out on the wrong end of the result both times for exactly the same reason.

Which is a worrying sign. You would hope a coach would learn from such a mistake.

 

[croadyman]

Which is a worrying sign. You would hope a coach would learn from such a mistake.

Yeah my thoughts exactly

 

[harrington]

Didn't realise until I looked it up again just how close together Bonucci's & Perisic's equalising goals were to each other, one was in the 67th minute and the other in the 68th minute. The performances are so similar as well with England coming out on the wrong end of the result both times for exactly the same reason.

Nice! The similar timings of England's goals in the two games, and of the equalisers for Italy and Croatia is striking, and it's interesting to compare the two matches, but there would've been influencing factors specific to each ('correlation doesn't equal causation', is it?).

 

[weetee]

Was surprised to see the passing stat for the game and England has only a completion rate of 70% for short passes. Italy got 89% there and England had shocking 58% during ET! Would need to watch the game a third time to actually pay attention to what's happened there.