England Exit Euro’s on Penalties (Surprise, Surprise)

Another quarter final, another penalty shoot-out, another early exit for England, and while Roy Hodgson and Steven Gerrard were quick to stress how hard England worked and how proud they were, they were just as quick to glaze over how badly England played for most of the game.

Going into the game there was a mild wave of optimism that if England kept the ball a bit better, and played a little more positively then we could cause the Italians problems.

For the first 15-20 minutes that’s exactly what happened, England actually made an effort to get forward, had some positive link-up play and could even have been in front.

Alas it proved to be a false dawn, as from then on England dropped further and futher back, gave the ball away more and more and looked like they were holding out for penalties.

There was always a confident response from an England player when asked about penalties in the run-up to the game, but for the sixth time in a shoot-out since Italia 90 England were on the losing side, and have the worst penalty record there is.

Italy had looked shaky for spells in the group stages, but grew in confidence throughout the game and should have been out of sight by the end of extra-time.    

Andrea Pirlo gave a midfield master class spraying the ball to all corners of the ground, although his performance was aided by the fact that from the 21^st minute he was afforded the freedom of Kiev.

England can take a lot from this tournament, there was a unity in the squad, they were organised, they defended valiantly, but they were too negative, lacking in ideas, and simply weren’t good enough.

With the semi-final line-up now complete, a replay of the 2008 final between Spain and Germany is looking the most likely outcome.

But whatever happens from now on in I can enjoy watching the games without burying my head in my hands every 3 seconds because an England miss placed a simple pass.

On a side note can everyone stop serving up the same bulls**t line that you can’t replicate taking a penalty in a shoot-out in training.

It may be true, but by that logic why bother practicing anything, passing, shooting, marking, because you can’t replicate match conditions on the training ground, its nonsense.

Penalties are an aspect of the game and like any other aspect of the game should be practised over and over again, to build confidence and familiarise yourself with them.   

Unfortunately when it comes to taking a penalty in a major shoot-out you need your players to hold their nerve and once again England’s players didn’t.