Better team (well, tactics imo) won last night. Very few real chances in the game for either side. First half I thought was pretty evens maybe England slightly edging it due to the goal, Italy had the possession but that was mostly due to the way the teams were setup. The second half pure game management approach was frustrating to watch because we've seen it all before in the semi vs Croatia at the last WC. Italy looked a lot less likely to score in the first half when they knew we could easily come out and punish any mistakes. Once England changed to a 4-3-3 when Henderson and Saka came on we looked quite a lot better imo, especially in the second half of ET. Unfortunately neither of those had their best game on the night.
Not much to say about the pens really other than it's horrible that we brought two penalty specialists on who both missed! Can't blame them at all though as your first kick of the ball being a pen + knowing you're only on for that reason isn't an ideal situation to say the least. Really feel for Saka, that pressure must have been horrendous. Shout out to Pickford who was immense during the shootout - His relatively small size I think puts him at a disadvantage there but to save two including from Jorginho who I don't think I've ever seen miss one is great.
I really hope that this loss doesn't scar the players (far better mentally to lose a narrow game in normal time I expect) too badly as being such a young group they're going to be our team for a long time.
