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England vs Italy. Is it coming home?


freezer

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First off , well done to Southgate, the staff and players. 
 

Congratulations to Italy who were the best team in the tournament and despite , the pressure from the crowd ,losing some of their best players and chasing the game from the off still had enough to beat a  very good England team.

The stars aligned for England which makes the defeat even harder. 

I believe GS lost it with his subs being introduced too late and both Rashford and Sancho were ‘ cold’ having hardly got into the match.

Wasn’t Sancho’s first touch of the ball his penalty ?

 The future is bright and we have a World Cup next year .

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5 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

Is anyone surprised at that?

Italy started to overrun from halfway through the first half and it continued in the beginning of the second half.

Southgate waited ridiculously too long to make changes. Next idiocy, sending players on at the last minute "to take penalties".

It doesn't work.  If anyone has been watching the Cope D'America you'd have seen a game where Paraguay had to take penalties against Uruguay: they sent some bloke on as a sub and he completely ****** it up. Players need to have a number of touches to play into the game.  Sancho and Rashford barely touched the ball. And Rashford has been in terrible form for months.  Dead-ball specialist Calvert-Lewin was unused.

England will never get anywhere with Southgate in charge. 

We have the players. We simply do not have the brain to use them. 

"Never get anywhere"................isn't a first final in 55 years "somewhere"? Particularly when the team 2-3 players short in key areas as it stands today. Seems that perspective has been overtaken by disappointment on the back of this defeat.

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We’ve got the players, we just need a manager capable of making us play as a team. Just like City of a couple of years ago, we’ve bullied our way past teams by having better players, but we just lack the togetherness of a team like Denmark. 

I dont dislike Gareth Southgate, but there’s got to be better out there. The tactics last night were pretty awful. Everyone could see the equaliser coming, except for one man. 

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5 hours ago, fgrsimon said:

There's a very good reason why you don't have your best penalty takers at 5 or even 4. It's because it might not get that far. 

It's a fair point. I remember Portugal went out after 4 pens at a tournament a few years back and Ronaldo was in line to take the 5th. But surely you play the event. If 4 and 5 do need to be brought forward then do it. Surely players are not that robotic that they can't move one place forward if need be? 

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11 minutes ago, NewquayRed said:

Can’t believe the calls for Southgate to go after just making a final, young manager learning the trade along side the players. He gets next year in Qatar for me at least. 

Realistically, should you be learning your trade as the England manager? Definitely not. 

Whereas I don’t think he’s necessarily done a bad job, tactically I think he’s naive and we could and should have done better. 

Whereas I think sacking him would be a little unfair, we need to be in the best possible position for Qatar and I think to be in said best possible position, we need someone with experience… someone who has teams playing better than the sum of its parts. And for me, that’s not Gareth Southgate. 

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Old adage from my youth.

Hit a penalty as hard as you can on target. The goalkeeper will get lucky occasionally and you'll miss the target very occasionally.

All these fancy stop/start run ups to the ball and trying to pass it in with side of foot, is handing back the initiative to the goalkeeper.

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28 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

We’ve got the players, we just need a manager capable of making us play as a team. Just like City of a couple of years ago, we’ve bullied our way past teams by having better players, but we just lack the togetherness of a team like Denmark. 

I dont dislike Gareth Southgate, but there’s got to be better out there. The tactics last night were pretty awful. Everyone could see the equaliser coming, except for one man. 

Spot on. It does my head, it really does. You could see we were on the ropes and that an equaliser was coming and Southgate makes the changes after the goal? With the players at his disposal we should have put up a better display than that. 

Mancini is a much better manager all day long!

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3 minutes ago, cidered abroad said:

Old adage from my youth.

Hit a penalty as hard as you can on target. The goalkeeper will get lucky occasionally and you'll miss the target very occasionally.

All these fancy stop/start run ups to the ball and trying to pass it in with side of foot, is handing back the initiative to the goalkeeper.

Completely agree.

After all of the superb play and tactics leading up to that moment the penalty shoot out was very poor. Rashford, Sancho and Saka all had very poor attempts. When your keeper saves two you should be in with a chance. 

The senior players seemed to go AWOL though, although GS said that was the running order from training so maybe the occasion got to them. 

Either way it’s a massive opportunity missed. 

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30 minutes ago, Fordy62 said:

We’ve got the players, we just need a manager capable of making us play as a team. Just like City of a couple of years ago, we’ve bullied our way past teams by having better players, but we just lack the togetherness of a team like Denmark. 

I dont dislike Gareth Southgate, but there’s got to be better out there. The tactics last night were pretty awful. Everyone could see the equaliser coming, except for one man. 

I think Southgate called it wrong in the second half and extra time last night but I think he has done a better job of getting England to play as a team than any manager since Bobby Robson. (I got into football just as Robson left the England job so don’t feel qualified to comment on him or anyone who went before).

Plus Southgate has two tournaments and so far has one semi final and one final, plus got us our first knockout win against major opposition since Euro 96, if we are being kind to the Spain side of the time m, or Christ knows when before that if we’re not. People will say Germany weren’t in great form but they finished above (and utterly dominated) Portugal.

The cold hard facts are Southgate has the second best tournament record of any England manager in history. We’ve chased the “better” for 55 years. Manager after manager has failed to provide it.

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After sleeping on that and listening to the post-mortem comments from various sources I end up with some simple conclusions:

The better team won

England have significantly improved over recent years 

Southgate is doing a solid job

There is more to come from this squad

 

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20 minutes ago, cidered abroad said:

Old adage from my youth.

Hit a penalty as hard as you can on target. The goalkeeper will get lucky occasionally and you'll miss the target very occasionally.

All these fancy stop/start run ups to the ball and trying to pass it in with side of foot, is handing back the initiative to the goalkeeper.

Remember 1990 and 1996 - no fancy routines then, but we still lost.  The fact is that penalties are a lottery, and ultimately don’t decide which is the better side, they just find you a winner.

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Devastated. 

We've made progress under Southgate and with a talented batch of youngsters there's no reason why we can't get our hands on a trophy in the foreseeable future. 

Italy were the best team in the tournament in fairness. 

Gutted for Rashford, Sancho and Saka. Brave to step up and take one, will be better players for it. Absolutely disgusting the abuse they're getting but sadly it was totally predictable.

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8 hours ago, Slacker said:

There goal was coming for such a long time and we did nothing to counter it.I think this was where we really lost our chance. England did really well to get to the final,but the better team won on the night.

From about 25 minutes we retreated. Stopped pressing high. Italy began to dominate the ball and we couldn't get sustained possession after really. 

As for the penalties Switzerland tried the same staggered jumpy run ups vs Spain and lost out. Penalties are very straight forward. You run up and kick the ball in the goal. We over complicated them.

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7 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

Is anyone surprised at that?

Italy started to overrun from halfway through the first half and it continued in the beginning of the second half.

Not all. Mr Southgate puts out negative teams. He takes modern coaching ideas and creates a outlier of a team. Who else plays a seven and three. His seven defenders and three forwards created virtually no chances in open play v Germany v Italy they created one. In both games they conceded midfield. Versus Italy a superior team England were over ran after thirty minutes and in the second half had 30% of the possession by choice of the Manager. His seven and three v Italy couldn't keep the football to keep Italy off them and one of his explosive attacking three was Mount, a player who is not dynamic when the team counter, even the transition to counter  attack was conservative. 

No surprises.

7 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

Is anyone surprised at that?

Italy started to overrun from halfway through the first half and it continued in the beginning of the second half.

Southgate waited ridiculously too long to make changes. Next idiocy, sending players on at the last minute "to take penalties".

It doesn't work.  If anyone has been watching the Cope D'America you'd have seen a game where Paraguay had to take penalties against Uruguay: they sent some bloke on as a sub and he completely ****** it up. Players need to have a number of touches to play into the game.  Sancho and Rashford barely touched the ball. And Rashford has been in terrible form for months.  Dead-ball specialist Calvert-Lewin was unused.

 

Bang on. I have done the penalties. Mr Southgate states he chose the takers. He chose the mindsets. Including young ones. 

 

7 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

England will never get anywhere with Southgate in charge. 

We have the players. We simply do not have the brain to use them. 

England are getting somewhere but England do have the players to do differently. A change in philosophy is required.  Englands dna to quote the FA is power and strength, we have that and creativity. Mr Southgate is restraining both. History doesn't reveal successful (winners) teams who play like Southgates England of seven and three or his teams minus a creative talent on the pitch.  .

 

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31 minutes ago, Markman said:

Better Team  won - thought we were poor last night - Italy bossed us for 75 minutes and Gareth did not know how to change things - ET was a bit of a dirge  - life goes on

Which 75 mins did Italy boss? Thought we bossed the first half and neither team did a lot in ET.

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20 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

Anyone mentioned how well Pickford played?

The save just before their goal and two pens as well. Fair play.

One of our best players of the tournament, made a number of very good saves in other games as well. I’d probably say top 3 for England as Shaw, Sterling, Pickford 

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54 minutes ago, LondonBristolian said:

I think Southgate called it wrong in the second half and extra time last night but I think he has done a better job of getting England to play as a team than any manager since Bobby Robson. (I got into football just as Robson left the England job so don’t feel qualified to comment on him or anyone who went before).

Plus Southgate has two tournaments and so far has one semi final and one final, plus got us our first knockout win against major opposition since Euro 96, if we are being kind to the Spain side of the time m, or Christ knows when before that if we’re not. People will say Germany weren’t in great form but they finished above (and utterly dominated) Portugal.

The cold hard facts are Southgate has the second best tournament record of any England manager in history. We’ve chased the “better” for 55 years. Manager after manager has failed to provide it.

The facts are that he couldn’t of hand picked two easier routes to the final in the last two tournaments, shockingly negative team selection last night resulting in Kane not having a touch in the opposition’s box, the difference last night were the managers, a serial winner on one side and a guy on the other side who has had just 3 years as a premiership manager with Middlesbrough finishing in the bottom half twice before eventually getting them relegated and getting himself the sack, how the hell did he get the England gig?

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17 minutes ago, Lrrr said:

One of our best players of the tournament, made a number of very good saves in other games as well. I’d probably say top 3 for England as Shaw, Sterling, Pickford 

I thought Maguire had a decent tournament as well

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My feeling is that Saka was the wrong sub to bring on, he seemed a bit lost so we didn’t have the creative outlet that was required. 
It was clear to see that we sat back and invited Italy in, second half. I guess that was instruction from GS? We certainly lost our way then. 

But even after all that we actually only lost on (another ?) penalty shoot out. 
A real shame but we had lost the game second half.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, harrys said:

The facts are that he couldn’t of hand picked two easier routes to the final in the last two tournaments, shockingly negative team selection last night resulting in Kane not having a touch in the opposition’s box, the difference last night were the managers, a serial winner on one side and a guy on the other side who has had just 3 years as a premiership manager with Middlesbrough finishing in the bottom half twice before eventually getting them relegated and getting himself the sack, how the hell did he get the England gig?

Everyone was saying beforehand that Germany would thrash us. People predicted Croatia would win the group. We beat Croatia with ease and they pushed semi finalists Spain to extra time. We comfortably managed Germany who utterly outclassed Portugal.

We were certainly on the easier side of the draw but I think it is a bit disingenuous to put our progress down to that alone. We went five games without conceding, including Croatia and Germany. Even in a poor performance, we pushed the best side in the tournament to penalties. 

Southgate is not perfect and Mancini delivered a tactical masterclass. But plenty of England managers have delivered far less with equal or greater opportunities and a first semi final in 22 years followed by a first final in 55 is an achievement that deserves far more credit than you give it.

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48 minutes ago, cidercity1987 said:

Anyone mentioned how well Pickford played?

The save just before their goal and two pens as well. Fair play.

Best England player of the tournament IMO. Aside from being consistent throughout, he's a very good distributor of the ball.

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29 minutes ago, Super said:

Which 75 mins did Italy boss? Thought we bossed the first half and neither team did a lot in ET.

Not the game I saw - first 20 mins we were good - then Italy got a grip - and second half totally bossed us - I watched with me old Mum who knows football but that's about it and her words were "why do the white ones just defend all the time and let the others attack" - we lost the plot (IMHO) I think Italy had us in their pockets after 20 mins and IMHO Gareth did not know what to do - we did well but the best team won - might be 50 years of watching City have damaged my rose tinted glasses (levity)

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