100 % on Southgate. His tradition of penalty choking continues. As has been said, bringing on two players he hasn't trusted during the entire tournament, in the last minute of the match, having them shoot the penalties completely cold...then sending a kid to shoot the decisive penalty...when I saw what he was doing, I expected this to happen. Happy for the Italians, actually. Chiellini - such a character. The whole team played with passion. Something that was lacking from people like "Querpass-Toni" Kroos.
I'm in London and I love it. Disgusted by the arrogance of the fans and the media, openly portraying themselves as clear favourites, being completely oblivious about other nations ("this Donnarumma guy looks like a good keeper" is a real sentence uttered by an English pundit), and being overall idiots. Thrashing Leicester Square, burning the Italian flag, crashing through the barriers and storming Wembley, openly snorting coke in the stands and in fan zones, they are a bunch of bellends and I'm so glad they lost. I'm feeling sorry for the women and children however, domestic abuse shoots up by 38% when England loses, 26% when they win. All in all, life is much shittier when England plays. EDIT: Oh, let's not forget the racist abuse the trio of Rashford, Sancho and Saka have been receiving online and in pubs across England right now (have heard enough horrifying stories from friends in the last few hours)
Shame on you England. You are losers in more ways than one. Racist abuse of England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho & Bukayo Saka condemned by FA https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/57800431
Yes, you'd never see that sort of behavior among soccer fans anywhere else in Europe Always fun when a soccer tourney comes around and reminds the rest of the world of your continent's little petty hatreds.
Mason Mount is still on the pitch despite being utter ****. Southgate saying he wont sub him out until next Euros.
If your country is responsible for the word 'hooligan' you know your fanbase isn't your in laws favorite.
There is nothing little and petty. This is real hatred that only recently is being buried and swept under a rug and finds the opportunity to rear its head in sports and competitions.
It's the special mix of entitlement, boorishness, mob mentality, sunburns, beer bellies and geopolitical arrogance that makes England a cut above the rest. Southgate deserves all of the criticism in the world. Aside from the penalties that everyone has discussed, England completely abandoned their strategy after scoring so early and tried to bunker down for 88 minutes. Kane, Sterling and Mount were completely out of sync after the goal because they were sitting so far back and there was never anyone making a run for an extra pass when the team did go forward. I saw a stat that said there were zero expected goals among the three of them yesterday. If you were given a printout of stats - possession, shots, completed passes, etc. - it would be clear that Italy was the better team and deserved to win.
They're always dramatic for neutral fans, but tortuous if your team is involved. Aside from golden goal, I don't know what a solution is since it's clear that everyone on the field is gassed after 120 minutes.
My gut reaction is that 7x7 wouldn't help that much since they'd have to cover more ground on even more tired legs. Seems like a recipe for sloppy play. I became a fan after the golden goal era so maybe some others can tell us how that was taken at the time compared to penalties?
There is no need to reinvent the wheel lol PKs are fine. Yes, luck plays a part but its also about skill and some mind games. Its not bad imo
PK's are made to push teams to score in extra time and not just play to a stalemate. It's supposed to to semi negative make team hate taking their chance at luck but it's also a cool way for less talented teams to potentially steal games. It's fun and and exciting and fuels storylines.
