Imagine

Sterling's penalty record for City is awful. Sancho should've come on for him early in extra time.

Is Kane the only regular penalty taker for his club? I know Sancho has taken some, but thought Haaland was the regular taker for Dortmund. Fernandes takes them at United and Aubameyang at Arsenal.

 

Did Southgate pick the five players to take the penalties? Or did the five players that were willing to put themselves forward to take the penalties pick themselves?

Its ok to suggest that other players would have been better, but those other players might have known themselves that the nerves were getting to them and they would have bottled it.

 

Rashford scored 10 in last 2 seasons
Jack Grealish is second choice for AV

 

Henderson is not a great penalty taker.

 

There's no shame in being too nervous. Would really love to see some on here put in the same situation. Very quick to blame.
Seems some in our country feel all we had to do was turn up to win, or that we're entitled to win it.

 

For me if you’re good enough to play for England then age shouldn’t come in to it when taking penalties, it’s down to the players that are willing to step up,Grealish and Stirling didn’t fancy it, as a manager I’d always go with the players that are willing to take one,

 

I'd want my best takers (or at least the coolest heads) 4th and 5th, every time.

 

Grealish wanted one. It should never have reached pens. If you have a shot on target after two minutes and no more in the next two hours then you only have yourselves to blame. 60+ thousand fans boos the opposition taking penalties at the end the home fans were at, home advantage of very little travel through the tournament, in the best half of the draw to avoid the bigger teams and we still didn't do it.

 

If you leave your best penalty taker until the end there is a chance that they don't get to take one - think it happened to Ronaldo against Spain? I absolutely wouldn't have had Kane up first though.

 

In knockout competition football you don’t just decide who’s taking which penalty on the spur of the moment. It will have been practised every day in training which is why the young lads got the nod.

But and it’s a big but. Training isn’t the same pressure as taking one in the final of what is arguably the 2nd biggest international tournament in the world,
Would you expect Rashford to score? Yes absolutely, he was cool and hit the post. That was the killer mistake that put the other lads under more pressure. I’ve no issue with Rashford at all, what he’s done for kids and their well-being is phenomenal. He was put in a difficult position last night. Hardly kicked a ball in anger during the tournament and expected to score a penalty in the final shootout. Same goes for Sancho in that respect.

Sancho and Saka’s penalties were poor, not in the corner and at a comfortable height for the keeper.
Was that due to indecision caused by pressure? Probably!

I never put my hand up for penalties when I played. I maybe took 2 in 15 years and the pressure then was horrible, never mind in a massive final.

 

This is the bit that I just can't get my head around. How can you expect someone to take a pen in a shootout in a major final, with virtually their first touch, and to put two players in that position just exaggerates it even more. If Sterling wasn't one of the 5, Sancho should've played at least half of extra time, maybe longer, because Sterling wasn't having his best game anyway.

Don't really have a problem with the selection of penalty takers. With hindsight might have wanted to change the order a bit, but no guarantees any of the others would've scored. It's the attempt at defending the 18 yard box for 88 minutes and the double sub at 119 minutes that I just could not understand.

 

For me, Saka has no blame at all. Southgate's substitutions cost us the game.

Imagine the pressure that was on Rashford and Sancho, after basically being told they are going in with seconds left just to take penalties. They were in a no-win situation. They should have come on after 90 minutes, or even the second half of extra time and just run at the Italians. There would have been less pressure on them in the shootout too.

Taking Trippier off was a mistake also, as I think he would have buried his....

 

Not so sure about the first point, seeing a team miss first and still win isn't too uncommon. Second part is bang on though.

 

Agree with all this.
I’m not going to watch it again but I don’t imagine a lot of penalties are great in these circumstances. If the keeper goes the wrong way it doesn’t matter. We were the width of the post away from scoring as many as they did so it wasn’t terrible.
It’s a really good point that a lot of them will be together for a long time in this squad. They should feel less pressure next time. It wasn’t the perfect ending but they still did better than we expected in getting to the final in the first place.

 

Sterling isn’t a great penalty taker but Grealish has said he wanted one, I’d have had him taking the 5th.