Spain were far braver. There’s no courage in counter attacking. Another example of penalties being a terrible way of deciding a game
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How were they brave? Thet hogged the ball but the only time they really tried to get in behind Italy all night was the goal. So much of the ball, so little ambition.
Its gas to make out it’s more brave to let the opposition have the ball and then hit on the counter than to try to control the ball yourself. Spain’s tactics worked better anyway as they clearly had the better chances
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Bonucci called it the toughest game of his career but I’m sure Fulvio knows more
Italy didn’t let Spain have the ball. Spain won the midfield battle but when Spain had the ball they played in front of Italy. When Italy had the ball they tried to get in behind. That was the difference, both teams went with high press but Italy were team who were willing to be more audacious, to risk giving the ball away. Italy were the team who committed more men forward.
Emerson got much further forward than any Spanish defender did. Barella got much further forward than any Spanish midfielder did. Italy tried to stretch Spain. Spain played in front of Italy
If Spain tried to be more audacious they would not have had as much possession but they might have created more chances. They tried to win by possession. 5 of their 6 games were draws in regulation time. Why do you think that was?
I’m sure it was. But it wasn’t the toughest game Donnarumma ever played. Spain dominated the ball but were pretty toothless. You have to show more courage on the ball, take a man on, get in behind - play with the handbreak off every now and again.
But no Spain went safe, shifted it sideways and sideways, didn’t want to risk the risky ball in behind in case Italy got it.
I’d say if you looked at average positions for Jordi Alba and Emerson you’d see which of them was further forward. Same with Pedri and Barella. Italy sat in and countered to not very good effect against a slow back line. Spain kept the ball against a strong defensive team and created enough chances to win the game. Spain don’t have players in attacking positions that will create 10 chances a game, they played the best way they could to win the game and were unlucky. The way Spain play the game is a lot more courageous than getting the ball on the counter and trying to kick it behind the defenders and run after it, not that there’s anything wrong with that either.
Also it’s easier for Emerson or Barella to get forward when they know they won’t have to make another run for 5 minutes
You see games in statistics.
I see games in mentality. Spain are ultra, ultra cautious with the ball - losing it is the biggest sin. They view possession as the key to winning.
Italy view it as shape and character. Some one like Insigne, he will take a risk. Spain were good tonight but they played with fear. Italy might have been dictated to in terms of possession but they showed courage on the ball. Freedom was the order of the day rather than checking inside for a lateral pass. It was hit Immobile in behind. It’s a 30/70 ball but let’s be brave.
What’s brave about hitting balls over the top?
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Kicking a ball over the top where the worst case scenario is that the other team’s goalkeeper gets the ball with your full team back in their defensive shape is braver than keeping the ball in midfield trying to break down the opposition apparently
It’s a rose tinted view because winners write history so he can point to the result as justificstion. I agree with @the_man_himself it’s much easier to play counter attacking football and hope for a mistake or hit balls over the top.
It’s braver to play possession attacking football because you run the risk of losing the ball constantly and being blitzed on the counter which means the defensive team sits in further. It’s an understandable way of playing when there’s a vast gulf in class between two teams but when it’s evenly matched opponents I think it’s a safety first strategy and not much to be admired about it.
Spain were the better team, controlled play and had the better chances. Good luck to Italy in the final, I hope they do it but England will play in a similar safety first style so it’ll be interesting. Busquets dominated mf tonight.
This shows a real lack of understanding of the game. Insigne will take a risk when he’s playing because it isn’t really a risk. He’ll get the ball with loads of space and loads of space to play the ball into in behind and worst case scenario he loses it and he has 8 players behind him to defend. No risk there at all.
If Pedri or Dani Olmo get the ball on the other end they are surrounded by 3 or 4 Italians and no space at all in behind so most of the time they don’t have any option but to find a teammate to keep possession or it’s a counter attack as their centre halves will be at around the half way line.
You’re brave by trying to be progressive on the ball. Italy didn’t hit many balls over the top. They did try and play through the lines a lot quicker though, they did try and get in behind a lot quicker, they did risk losing the ball more.
Spain played with too much fear.
Italy didn’t play the ball over the top. They tried to play it out from the back, they tried to play through the lines quickly, the Spanish press worked well against this and you’re just raging that in spite of Italy having half of the ball Spain did they created as many good chances.
It’s not brave to keep the ball and that’s why Spain were only able to win one of 6 games in regulation time.
Spain’s possession stats all tournament
V Sweden 75%
V Poland 76%
V Slovakia 62%
V Croatia 64%
V Switzerland 65%
V Italy 65%
The only game they won in regulation time was when they had the least possession. Maybe there’s a lesson there for them? Maybe they need to abandon their ultra cautious safety by possession game, maybe they need to allow their creative players throw off the shackles more.
Rather than checking inside and passing it laterally, someone should be brave and go in behind.
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Sergio Ramos is definitely the man you want in a penalty shoot out.
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Jorginho, Chiellini and Chiesa: In all the chaos, how could Italy be so damn calm?
James Horncastle 1h ago
20 
Jorginho opens up his chest and blows out his cheeks as if he’s taking a yoga class, not the final spot kick in a European Championship semi-final. Think of it as a meditation in penalty taking. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Calma! Calma! Calma! Only how can you be so damn calm when everyone is shouting at you to stay as tranquillo as possible?
“I took a deep breath and tried to forget everything going on around me,” he said. Don’t think about the misses of years gone by. Donadoni, Serena, Baresi, Massaro, Baggio, Albertini, Di Biagio.
Oddio, there’s a lot.
Don’t look at the Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon, who has already denied the crestfallen Manuel Locatelli. Block out the expectant team-mates arm in arm on the halfway line. Ignore the thousands of anxious fans in the stands, the 60 million Italians at home. All those eyes. All on him.
Jorginho centred himself, slowed his heart rate down and simplified an act that pressure makes so complicated. “I did what I train to do,” he said as if it were that easy. And yet it was. Jorginho hopped, watched Simon on the way down, sent him the other way and sent Italy into the final.
In terms of sheer bravado, it was reminiscent of the time Francesco Totti turned to Paolo Maldini in the build-up to his own spot kick in the shootout that settled the Euro 2000 semi-final against the Netherlands and said: “Mo je faccio un cucchiaio.” I’m gonna spoon him. Not in the romantic sense, this was Roman dialect and there’s nothing especially tender about what Totti then did to Edwin van der Sar. Cucchiaio is Italian for spoon, or in this case a Panenka, and Totti never doubted himself for a second even as he heard his team-mates call after him: “No! Noooooo! Francesco, nooooo!”
The same was true of Andrea Pirlo in 2012, who shushed a shouty Joe Hart with the deftest and most delectable of dinks against England at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv.
As Jorginho relived the moment all he could do was laugh. There was no arrogance to it. None whatsoever. The cackle was instead light-hearted and while it came as a surprise given how high the stakes were, it felt broadly representative of the team’s curiously ebullient mood going into the shootout. Pressure? What pressure?
Italy’s giant of a goalkeeper Gigio Donnarumma was seen smiling in the huddle as Roberto Mancini reeled off his list of penalty takers. At the coin toss, Giorgio Chiellini was all fun and games. “Mentiroso!” he shouted animatedly in Spanish at Jordi Alba. “You’re a liar”. The veteran defender seemed amused at the idea Spain’s captain may have tried to get one over him in apparently changing his mind over which end he wanted to take the penalties. “Chiello” jovially grabbed Alba by the neck and pushed him around as if to say: “Good one, Jordi. Maybe next time,” causing the match officials to look at the Barcelona left-back and giggle, which can’t have done much for his morale. Chiellini’s confidence on the other hand seemed off the charts.
The swagger that had distinguished Italy’s football throughout the group stage and then once again in the quarter-final against Belgium in Munich had largely been suppressed by Spain. But when extra time ended and the shootout began here it re-emerged. This was a serenity so unsettling you wondered what on earth had got into these Italians. Are they not knackered? They seem delirious. And yet Italy were possessed by a disquieting lucidity.
Spain were the better team at Wembley. The much-anticipated midfield battle was so one-sided as to be almost irrelevant. “I watched Bonucci and Chiellini play against Romelu Lukaku,” Luis Enrique explained, “and thought it might be better to try something different against them.”
His idea was to go strikerless and have Dani Olmo double as a false nine as well as the extra body in midfield he needed to out-number Jorginho, Marco Verratti and Nicolo Barella. The willingness of Cesar Azpilicueta to step up and rush Italy’s left-back Emerson Palmieri also meant Spain were prepared to risk playing one-against-one at the back against Italy’s strikers, allowing them to press higher and pin the Azzurri back. For long, what felt like eternal spells, it worked.
“After the final whistle, I went over to Luis Enrique to congratulate him,” Bonucci said. He wanted to show his respect. “Never before under Mancini have we been made to suffer so much. It was so tough, a really difficult game, the hardest of my career,” he added. In the end, the match would come down to just nine kicks but before the shootout, a Spanish side billed as no longer the Spain of old proved to be more Spanish than ever — 70 per cent possession and 908 passes to the 387 attempted by Italy.
Mancini removed his seersucker Armani jacket but that silver quiff of his was never out of place. There was no trace of sweat on his crisp white shirt even as Pedri and Olmo danced around his midfield. At times, it was like watching Rocky take hit after hit from Clubber Lang all the while hollering at him: “You ain’t so bad! You ain’t so bad! You ain’t nothing!”
Lang memorably shouted back: “You must be crazy of something. You’re just a stupid fool.” Spain presumably felt the same when Donnarumma had the presence of mind to try to turn defence into attack, hastily rolling the ball out to Verratti, who set in a motion a breathtaking counter from which Federico Chiesa opened the scoring.
Chiesa curls in Italy’s opener (Photo: Matt Dunham/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
There was a lot to like about the goal — particularly Lorenzo Insigne’s outside of the foot pass for Ciro Immobile — but Chiesa’s angled finish instantly brought to mind his papa, Enrico. Before the game, a video of baby Fede kicking a ball in a chunky white knit had gone viral and with a beaming smile, he said: “It was great to watch it again. We’re the only father and son duo to score at the Euros. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Chiesa had come on and scored in extra time of Italy’s round-of-16 tie with Austria — a goal that got Gianluca Vialli out of his seat and running down the steps to celebrate with Mancini, his best friend of 40 years. It also further enhanced the Juventus winger’s reputation as a man for the big occasion. He scored in both legs of the Old Lady’s Champions League knockout tie with Porto, settled the Coppa Italia final against Atalanta and keeps stepping up at the Euros despite losing his place on the eve of the tournament to Domenico Berardi. Two goals on two visits to Wembley certainly bodes well for the final on Sunday.
Once ahead, there was the fleeting promise of Italy winning the game in normal time after the changes Mancini made momentarily turned the tide. He decided to mirror Spain’s strikerless formation, replacing Immobile with Berardi and using Insigne as Italy’s false nine before changing system to a 4-2-3-1, with substitute Matteo Pessina deployed behind Andrea Belotti in a position that was not a traditional No 10, but more of a disruptor who might limit Sergio Busquets’ influence on the game. “We had some problems,” Mancini reflected, “but when we took the lead I thought we could get a second.”
Chiesa put Berardi through on goal with a cute reverse pass and not too long afterwards, the Sassuolo winger had another chance to kill the game. But his shot was saved and as the old Italian adage goes, “gol mangiato, gol subito” — miss a goal, concede a goal. Mancini’s tardiness in making other changes to a weary midfield meant holes started to open up, allowing Alvaro Morata to get in behind and equalise.
Unfortunately for Spain, it was the only chance they took all game. Italy bent without breaking and in addition to showing remarkable poise under extreme stress, what inspires confidence in this team is it has so many different faces. “We never forgot how to do it,” Sky Italia co-commentator Beppe Bergomi said of Italy’s ability to soak up pressure and score on the break. The Azzurri are a bridge between the old school and the avant-garde, capable of playing slick attacking football one game and with their backs against the wall the next.
“We never give up,” Jorginho said. “It’s a wonderful group that deserves all the best. We suffer together, play together, laugh together, joke around and even argue just as families do. Always together.” Recovering from surgery on the achilles he ruptured against Belgium, Leonardo Spinazzola celebrated on his sofa as his team-mates sang songs about him and pulled on shirts with his name and number on the back.
Blinking through the salty sting of his own sweat, Bonucci, who stewards mistook for a fan during the euphoric celebrations at the end of the shootout, also shed tears of joy. Choking up, he said: “Spain dominated us but Italian hearts never give up. They keep on beating. Always.” The passion in this team burns as hot as the sun down in Sicily at this time of year but Italy are through to the final because they were colder than a granita on a baking summer’s day.
(Top photo: Facundo Arrizabalaga – Pool/Getty Images)
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Ah lovely
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