England's Just Deserts
My suspicion that Gareth Southgate will leave things unchanged for the final proved wrong. He brought in Kieran Trippier for Bukayo Saka and moved to a 3-4-3 system that was meant to exploit the areas in behind Italy’s full backs. No more than a few minutes had gone by, and it seemed Southgate had already been vindicated, when England broke rapidly and scored on the counterattack. Harry Kane dropped deep, picked the ball up from Luke Shaw, and released Trippier who was bombing into the vast expanse of space on the right-wing. Shaw, having played the ball to Kane, didn’t stop. He darted into the box and met Trippier’s cross with a perfect finish past Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Italy were rattled. Jorginho tried his best to keep things ticking over, but their forwards, Ciro Immobile, Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Chiesa, kept running into a cul-de-sac. It took up until the 40th minute of the game for them to get going as a unit, but once they did, England scarcely had a response. For much of the second half, Jorginho and Marco Verratti ran the midfield. England’s system had fallen apart.
At about the hour mark, once it was clear that the team had wrested back control, Roberto Mancini made his first changes. He withdrew Ciro Immobile and rejigged his three forwards into a fluid, interchangeable unit. Chiesa began to play more from the left wing, and, until he had to go off injured, he was a joy to watch. He drove relentlessly at the England back-line, leaving their defenders with twisted blood, and it was a corner that came from one of his bending, dangerous crosses that led to the equaliser.
Although they were weakened by Chiesa’s departure, Italy continued to dominate the ball. They moved it swiftly from side to side and England had little by way of response. Southgate, it seemed, was intent on taking the game into a shootout. His changes were reactive, and he never once sought to regain the control that his team had ceded in midfield. Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford, who, had they been given reasonable time on the pitch, might have been able to stretch the Italian backline were brought in with seconds left on the clock in extra-time. Ultimately, Southgate’s moves failed. Both Sancho and Rashford missed from the spot, and England were undone.
Penalty shootouts aren’t quite the lottery that they’re sometimes made out to be. But given the wealth of talent that Southgate had on his bench it was a mistake to settle for one. Rashford, Sancho and Grealish ought to have been afforded a proper run together at Italy’s tiring centre backs. Southgate’s backers might well argue that his methods had worked up until that point, that he’d taken England into a final, and that they’d come within a whisker of winning the cup. But much as their performance in the tournament constitutes progress, for England to take the next step they must find a way to get more out of their forwards.
It’s no doubt important to find specific solutions against different opponents and to make necessary tweaks from match to match. It’s also important to ensure that any eleven that is selected is balanced. But England are blessed with such depth of talent and flair in attack that it seems imprudent to play a system that doesn’t have more of them playing together on the pitch.