When facing a penalty in grassroots, or often grassrots, football I always felt I was in with a better chance if the kicker was either looking at me, or where he wanted me to think it was going. That's what Rashford got wrong. If he'd been playing for 30 minutes before he took it then I'm guessing muscle-memory would have kicked in and he'd have rolled the ball into the corner of the net. After he'd missed, the other two lads were rabbits in Donnaruma's headlights. They did well to get their efforts on goal, but both were poor penalties from very, very good young players.
The song NNN Nineteen keeps running through my head. Send the young black boys in to take the bullets. Chaotic management!
Harry Maguire's penalty was unstoppable.
Gareth Southgate seems a nice guy, he was a very good player and he is going to get a lot of praise for his management, but much of it is undeserved. We had the second best squad of players in the tournament and in World Football terms only France has more young players aged 18-25 coming through to the level for international football. We are pretty much neck and neck with Spain and ahead of Germany, Italy, Holland, Brazil and Argentina in sheer numbers. So Southgate got the second best squad to finish second .......... to a set of individuals who made themselves, or were made, into the best team. Italy CLEARLY deserved to win.
Where Mancini and his team were able to think on their feet and change tack half an hour in when they realised the impact Kane was having by lying deep, Southgate and his team stuck to their script even though it was clearly no longer working. Mason Mount has not been at his best in the tournament and clearly needed removing so that a player with the ability to link our central midfield players with attack could enter the fray. That player was Grealish. He wasn't trusted until we had stopped trying to score and had settled for penalties. He has the guts to stand up and take a penalty plus an excess of skill - as expected he wasn't selected. We fear individuality. We fear the maverick. English conservatism!
Once Kane began to be ineffective we should have been playing away from him, both to prevent him getting clattered and to allow him to break for the box and possibly get on the end of something. That never happened. He was never in the box, never had a shot yet is our major hope of a goal. If Kane didn't see what was happening Southgate should, indeed it should have been one of his contingencies and he should have made Kane aware of what he wanted to do in those circumstances.
I know Rice had done a lot of running, but he was one of the few players who was really doing his job and troubling the Italians. Removing him seemed abject, especially for Henderson when we had Bellingham there.
If we were bringing on a penalty-taker why not Calvert-Lewin, who does actually take them!?
I'd worry about a football manager if I agreed with him completely, but I reckon if Mancini had managed us and Southgate the Italians, we'd have won in extra time at the worst. The rest of Europe will be wondering why we left all that fresh attacking talent on the bench when we knew pennos for us is always a dog's chance.
If we hadn't spent the last week congratulating ourselves on lifting the nation out of pandemic gloom, booed the Italian anthem, got drunk, had a pitch invader, and started fighting, we might have finished an honourable second, but we wrecked even that. I feel sorry for those who put their heart and soul into this. The players and the manager certainly did. But you don't always play well and human beans don't always make good decisions. We have a potentially very, very good team. By the World Cup it should be even better. I hope our young stars will be allowed to slip the leash and show what they can really do.
The song NNN Nineteen keeps running through my head. Send the young black boys in to take the bullets. Chaotic management!
Harry Maguire's penalty was unstoppable.
Gareth Southgate seems a nice guy, he was a very good player and he is going to get a lot of praise for his management, but much of it is undeserved. We had the second best squad of players in the tournament and in World Football terms only France has more young players aged 18-25 coming through to the level for international football. We are pretty much neck and neck with Spain and ahead of Germany, Italy, Holland, Brazil and Argentina in sheer numbers. So Southgate got the second best squad to finish second .......... to a set of individuals who made themselves, or were made, into the best team. Italy CLEARLY deserved to win.
Where Mancini and his team were able to think on their feet and change tack half an hour in when they realised the impact Kane was having by lying deep, Southgate and his team stuck to their script even though it was clearly no longer working. Mason Mount has not been at his best in the tournament and clearly needed removing so that a player with the ability to link our central midfield players with attack could enter the fray. That player was Grealish. He wasn't trusted until we had stopped trying to score and had settled for penalties. He has the guts to stand up and take a penalty plus an excess of skill - as expected he wasn't selected. We fear individuality. We fear the maverick. English conservatism!
Once Kane began to be ineffective we should have been playing away from him, both to prevent him getting clattered and to allow him to break for the box and possibly get on the end of something. That never happened. He was never in the box, never had a shot yet is our major hope of a goal. If Kane didn't see what was happening Southgate should, indeed it should have been one of his contingencies and he should have made Kane aware of what he wanted to do in those circumstances.
I know Rice had done a lot of running, but he was one of the few players who was really doing his job and troubling the Italians. Removing him seemed abject, especially for Henderson when we had Bellingham there.
If we were bringing on a penalty-taker why not Calvert-Lewin, who does actually take them!?
I'd worry about a football manager if I agreed with him completely, but I reckon if Mancini had managed us and Southgate the Italians, we'd have won in extra time at the worst. The rest of Europe will be wondering why we left all that fresh attacking talent on the bench when we knew pennos for us is always a dog's chance.
If we hadn't spent the last week congratulating ourselves on lifting the nation out of pandemic gloom, booed the Italian anthem, got drunk, had a pitch invader, and started fighting, we might have finished an honourable second, but we wrecked even that. I feel sorry for those who put their heart and soul into this. The players and the manager certainly did. But you don't always play well and human beans don't always make good decisions. We have a potentially very, very good team. By the World Cup it should be even better. I hope our young stars will be allowed to slip the leash and show what they can really do.