Southgate got it badly wrong.

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comment by GTWI4T- some people deserve to get trolled (U6008)
posted 12 seconds ago
comment by Robb Sancho (U22311)
posted 4 minutes ago
comment by GTWI4T- some people deserve to get trolled (U6008)
posted 4 minutes ago
To be fair we have been decent in possession all tournament. We weren't last night but that is because we sat so deep for so long. I'll point again at Italy who did the same when going 1 down to Spain. A very good team like Italy dropped back and tried to hold on. It happens. We can only hope we continue to learn and grow as a team. I think we have done over the last 3 years. I
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The difference was though that Italy dropped back and didn’t panic when they got the ball back. England (and Maguire especially) hoofed it to no-one in particular on multiple occasions. Wasn’t really his fault as there was no one to get it to. Whereas Italy always had a Chiesa or Insigne to aim for for counter attacks.

Its perfectly acceptable to give proper praise to Southgate for some of the tournament but also slate him for getting it badly wrong today in terms of how he managed the game. The formation he picked was always going to end up sitting back if they went a goal up. And once Italy started to turn the screw he reacted far too late. Had Chiesa not gone off i doubt it would even have gone to penalties.
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Italy had less than 30% possession after they went a goal down. They didn't keep the ball well either. Granted it wasn't so obvious because there weren't the long punts into touch and also, the lead wasn't held as long but lets not pretend that Italy knocked the ball around when in possession. They kept losing it again and again.
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They were up against a Spanish side who they couldn’t get the ball off. So the lack of possession was more down to how good Spain were than how much of a choice Italy had in sitting back.

Italy aren’t anywhere near as good a possession side as Spain but were made to look so by an England side who with the formation they had making it a conscious or subconscious easy choice to sit back on what they had when up against a good Italy side who weren’t immune to pace. However England never broke with pace after half time. It was a strange choice to try and ride out the 1-0 when with Italy getting more and more dangerous England didn’t do anything to alleviate the threat.

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I do think most of the time, Spain win that game against Italy, thought they were quite unlucky not to win.

comment by GTWI4T- some people deserve to get trolled (U6008)
posted 11 seconds ago
comment by Robb Sancho (U22311)
posted 1 hour, 13 minutes ago
comment by GTWI4T- some people deserve to get trolled (U6008)
posted 12 seconds ago
comment by Robb Sancho (U22311)
posted 4 minutes ago
comment by GTWI4T- some people deserve to get trolled (U6008)
posted 4 minutes ago
To be fair we have been decent in possession all tournament. We weren't last night but that is because we sat so deep for so long. I'll point again at Italy who did the same when going 1 down to Spain. A very good team like Italy dropped back and tried to hold on. It happens. We can only hope we continue to learn and grow as a team. I think we have done over the last 3 years. I
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The difference was though that Italy dropped back and didn’t panic when they got the ball back. England (and Maguire especially) hoofed it to no-one in particular on multiple occasions. Wasn’t really his fault as there was no one to get it to. Whereas Italy always had a Chiesa or Insigne to aim for for counter attacks.

Its perfectly acceptable to give proper praise to Southgate for some of the tournament but also slate him for getting it badly wrong today in terms of how he managed the game. The formation he picked was always going to end up sitting back if they went a goal up. And once Italy started to turn the screw he reacted far too late. Had Chiesa not gone off i doubt it would even have gone to penalties.
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Italy had less than 30% possession after they went a goal down. They didn't keep the ball well either. Granted it wasn't so obvious because there weren't the long punts into touch and also, the lead wasn't held as long but lets not pretend that Italy knocked the ball around when in possession. They kept losing it again and again.
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They were up against a Spanish side who they couldn’t get the ball off. So the lack of possession was more down to how good Spain were than how much of a choice Italy had in sitting back.

Italy aren’t anywhere near as good a possession side as Spain but were made to look so by an England side who with the formation they had making it a conscious or subconscious easy choice to sit back on what they had when up against a good Italy side who weren’t immune to pace. However England never broke with pace after half time. It was a strange choice to try and ride out the 1-0 when with Italy getting more and more dangerous England didn’t do anything to alleviate the threat.
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Of course Spain are quality on the ball, but in the same way we did last night, Italy dropped off 10 yards and lost their shape when they had the ball which made it very hard to keep the ball.

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Italy didn’t drop off 10 yards against Spain though. Spain dominated from the very start and the Italy goal came against the run of play. The Italy plan was always to sit off and try and get a counter attack goal as they knew they couldn’t compete with Spain toe to toe.

England started well and then dropped back. Once you drop off and allow the opposition to dominate its very hard to change that mentality unless the manager makes tactical changes that alleviate the pressure. Nothing happened and you could see Maguire, Stones and Pickford visibly annoyed when they got the ball and no one was an outlet as they’d all dropped well inside their own half.

Even sending on Calvert Lewin to win long balls up the pitch would have been better than what (didn’t) happen in the end.

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It didn't work for them though, they ended up conceding subsequently taking them to extra time. This is the same mistake we made last night by ourselves, dropping into unnecessarily deep areas for the stage of the game we were at. We were defending as if there was 10/15 minutes left when there was actual 35/40 minutes left, we were always going to get caught out doing that, regardless of the scoreline at the time.

We missed our chance in the first half where we were positive and had Italy on the backfoot. We allowed them back into the game in the second half and allowed their midfielders and better players to dictate the game.

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I know Italy have the quality to go and win games or do as they did last night, but this is a final and we got there through our quality and merit of our own. It wasn't exactly a massive nation against a minnow, there was no clear underdog so there was no reason for us to go about the task in a different way.

It's almost as if we were scared of them so we opted to just sit in, whereas our players on the break would have been able to more than cause them issues on the break ultimately.