England v Italy

I'm fuming at Southgate. Brining on players to take penalties is fine but you need to basically give them some minutes to get into it. it was so predictable that they would miss. And why take off Henderson who has scored at club level a few times in shootouts (I know he missed in a shootout for England) and Walker who is pretty decent with dead balls. And then let a 19-year-old who hasn't played many games really and certainly not many high-pressure games as he plays for Arsenal take one, he seemed since he came on the occasion was perhaps too big for him with some touches and passes he usually makes (Which isn't unusual, 19-year-olds who are instantly comfortable on such stages are rare, it takes some experience to get that mental toughness).

It's just poor man-management. And tbh his use of subs was poor all game, as soon as Italy realised sterling and mount weren't going to run behind the ageing CB's and said CB could fully commit to defending against Kane we lost the game. That's when we needed to change things up and get people on who will run past kane and give options thus drawing the defenders attention and giving Kane space back that he wasn't getting in the second half

 

Unfortunately with Kane that's now the norm as Jose has messed him up. You need one quick, hard-working player one side of him like Son does at Spurs and then someone quick the other side to get the best out of him. England too often here setup with fairly slow players, Sterling being the closest to a quick player but unless he is just deceptive he doesn't ever strike me as all that quick, he is more a Aldi version of Messi where his qualities are his low centre of gravity and quick feet

 

Some may disagree, but I felt over open play, Italy played the better football. You can’t get a more narrow victory than that. For Pickford to save two penalties, yet be on the losing side is amazing. We need to control the midfield better. The possession statistics show Italy had far more of the game. Perhaps scored too early? Still it is done.

 

See I don't think Italy played well for most of the game. We were generally fairly smart that we weren't bothered by possession stats, rather we were concerned with staying disciplined, not trying and engage them in areas they couldn't hurt us as they seemed to know doing so would drag our players out of position and give them the space that their talented midfielders could exploit. We were engaging them at the right time, when doing so was needed and didn't expose us and that was seeing them have to play a lot of sideways and backwards balls.

In the second half we seemed to be a yard slower and also got pushed deeper so we weren't engaging as much and the WB's were pretty much FB's. That started at the front t though. The 1st Half Kane was winning everything but Manchini seemed to have the CB's take a step up rather than being concerned about their age and pace being a liability and they started winning most of the balls so the ball just kept getting recycled. When Kane did win the ball Mount and Sterling weren't worrying Italy for pace and the WB's were too deep to get involved.

I don't feel we were really in that much trouble when they scored though, we were still frustrating them. The change of shape though left acres for Italys players to play with and players were often chasing shadows. We were lucky at that point to get into extra time. They just seemed like the wrong sub to make, we shouldn't have been changing shape (not to mention Trippier is a solid penalty taker), we just needed a change in personnel to try and get Kane back in the game and the WB's further up the field, Saka wouldn't have bene my choice but even if that's the choice Southgate wanted to make it should have been for either Mount of Sterling (Would have probably gone with Mount as at least Sterling was able to get on the ball and use his low centre of gravity and quick feet to dribble through people, mount wasn't really doing much in the role he was asked to play)

 

Stats don't always tell the full story though. Unless you are maybe Spain you arent going to go and out possession Italy, but they certainly want you to try and do so and go at them as that gives them the space these types of players rely on. I mean lets be honest Italy may have had 19 attempts and 6 on target but how many had you in a panic. We were largely forcing them to take potshots. And I wonder how many of those came after the change of shape which left us expossed.

 

The problem is if this was club Football you could argue that this was good enough as sometimes in club football even if that manager isn't the one to take the team onto glory being the one who rights the ship and lays the foundations can be as important as winning things as its what gives the next manager the base to go on and win things but international management is different. You only really have a competition of note every 2 years and you aren't developing players day in day out. All you have is man management over the tournament, team selection and in game tactical choices and in game tactical choices keep letting him down and that's a major problem. He just seems too indecisive for international football where a mistake being made normally means waiting 2 years to rectify it and most likely a large part of the squad 2 years later is different

 

And in American Football the special teams aren't just sitting there, doing the occasional jog down the line for when they are needed. They are off on the vast sidelines running intensive drills so if they need to come on and kick a field goal or run a special play they are both physically and mentally ready. In Football you don't have that, Rashford and Sancho can't be on the side running drills preparing them to come on simply to take a penalty in a shootout. Perhaps the only position you can maybe 'special team' in Football is the keeper, keepers have very little pressure on them, they are expected to not save them and there are drills you can do on the sideline as a keeper to prepare you that might in some cases be better than being the keeper on the pitch who isn't getting anything to do. And most importantly you can have them spend 29 minutes just looking over each potential takers penalty preferences to give them that edge of guessing the right way