Hardly a soft free kick. Shaw had both hands around the player. Just a form of cheating. It is about time they gave 10 mins in the sin bin for players holding, pulling shirts etc. It would stop all this type of play which is ruining football. I bet he is glad they won as he would have been blamed if that free kick had been the winner.
Did England deserve to win? Yes, Was that their 4th Home game out of 5? Yes, and will they find the low life with the Green Lazer? I hope so.
So do England deserve their rewards? I think so. I wasn't impressed with the tactics used in the first 3 games. Defensive and boring and only Grealish & Sterling seemed interested in attacking and Kane couldn't score in a brothel such was his form.
But it's changed and for the better. Kane with that early goal against the Ukraine has refound his Mojo and yesterday, he put in a pretty good shift. He might have missed the penalty but he was pretty damn quick at following it up instead of staring at it. Well done. Sterling did pretty good despite the "dive" and his contribution throughout the tournament has largely gone unappreciated.
The defence has held strong for the most part. not letting in much but there has been on ocassion some confusion amongst them when under pressure.
Can England win it? I hope so but this Italian outfit are pretty fast for the full 90. England will have to be on their toes but they will have home court advantage and about 80,000 fans to Italy's 20k. This could be a very good game or a boring one. I think, the former!
I thought the final was a good quality game with England taking an early lead and Italy struggling, surprisingly England did not capitalise on this as they should have been two up at half time. Italy deserves full credit for absorbing the pressure and repaying in kind in the second half. Their goal was not a moment of an individual brilliance but a result of an untidy but relentless pressure with England under the pump. The penalty win is always a bit "lucky". Should twenty-year-olds take the decisive penalties? If they are good enough they should. Both goalkeepers were excellent though, saving well, and it was the Rashford miss that was the telling difference. In the end I would not want to separate these two teams. Both were equally worthy of lifting the Cup, and maybe Spain was also unlucky. But neither England nor Italy had lifted the World cup or the Euro cup in recent years or even decades so it was good to see one of them go to the top.
I thought the final was a good quality game with England taking an early lead and Italy struggling, surprisingly England did not capitalise on this as they should have been two up at half time. Italy deserves full credit for absorbing the pressure and repaying in kind in the second half. Their goal was not a moment of an individual brilliance but a result of an untidy but relentless pressure with England under the pump. The penalty win is always a bit "lucky". Should twenty-year-olds take the decisive penalties? If they are good enough they should. Both goalkeepers were excellent though, saving well, and it was the Rashford miss that was the telling difference. In the end I would not want to separate these two teams. Both were equally worthy of lifting the Cup, and maybe Spain was also unlucky. But neither England nor Italy had lifted the World cup or the Euro cup in recent years or even decades so it was good to see one of them go to the top.
That was there for the taking for England. Italy were dogged, but unnerved. Also Italy defended Sterling’s surging run into the box- they didn’t dive in and Bonucci tackled him and took all ball. England didn’t give Grealish or Sancho with any significant time and were coasting in neutral a bit when Italy equalized.