What should have been a celebration of mass euphoria over the return of popular sport across the continent, not to mention a possible host champion in a historic first for England, turned into a rather ugly blot on England and football’s landscape.
Such was the shocking barbaric reaction, verbal and physical, to England’s loss to champions Italy, that there was the unfortunate consensus that perhaps England as a nation had not quite arrived yet, unlike their chorale to bring the cup home.
Gareth Southgate was in a tricky position after Sunday’s Euro championship finals. For a second time in two decades, he was fronting responsibilities for England’s dramatic loss, this time to Italy in the closing moments of Euro 2020, deemed an otherwise overwhelmingly successfully staged event and a monumental, unprecedented one in England’s history.
Wembley had dressed up for a dazzling show and in the end, had to deal with hooliganism and unbecoming behaviour, the repulsive side of England’s rambunctious football fans.
It should have been a celebration of two similar stories, though one has a greater history than the other when it comes to closing out finals.
Italy is now the champion of four World Cups and two Euro championships. But like England after the last World Cup, they too had been on the rebuild for lost glory.
Like Southgate, Roberto Mancini too was once a famed football player for his country before donning the manager’s hat. Like Southgate, Mancini was out to put Italy back on the map of serious contenders for the next World Cup event in Qatar in 2022.
For the first time since 1958, Italy had failed to qualify for the last World Cup. They had waited 53 years to see glory at the European championships. And the two teams were on the cusp of breaching their own individual jinx.
However, Mancini and Giorgino Chiellini, the Italian captain, were the ones lifting the trophy for showing patience, resilience and ultimately control as they were put through the pacers, having come through extra time and penalties on more than one occasion en route to the final.
The Italians’ grit, determination and fierce competitiveness slowly steered the game away from England and it would not be unfair to say, even before the eventual result went down to penalties.
On England’s part, their game plan appeared to have gone onto the side of complacency on the field after the early first goal scored by Like Shaw and they paid for it dearly in the end.
The England manager was a picture of dismay as he took full responsibility for the decisions on the field. It was indeed a shock unfolding of events from England, judging by the lineup, that took the penalties after extra-time, failed to separate the two teams on goals scored.
This is the one that unfortunately Southgate will fail to live down, just like his own missed penalty from 1996.
England could be faulted for their strategy, as much as for their inexperienced choice of the lineup for the penalties that included Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and 19-year-old Bukayo Saka.
The ball possession statistics and the shots on goal tell the picture of how much Italy recovered once they got over the shock of having to come from behind after only three minutes into the game.
Southgate talked about feeling like his stomach had been ripped out after a night of trying to make sense of what had happened and called the event of racial abuse at the players “unforgivable”, the latest being the defacement of a mural of Rashford in Manchester despite the footballer’s stellar efforts towards childhood rebuilding in youth.
While the football community at large, the British royalty, and the Prime Minister joined the chorus of condemnation, England will have to do deep soul searching after the chaos that erupted thereafter.
The event completely overshadowed the fact that not only had the Euro 2020 gone off practically without a hitch but also, that the England team had taken great strides towards rewriting their football destiny.
Adding insult to injury, racial abuse was meted out not only to the three players of colour on social media and online platforms but also, to innocent people of colour on the streets of London who had to take on the brunt of dejected and irate English football fans, putting the spotlight on England as a deeply divided nation and cast a dark shadow on what is a sport mired by episodes of hooliganism.
Indeed, the scars left behind from the absorbing final will not be so much of Saka’s kick being saved by the imposingly tall Italian goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, but rather of the immediate unspoken apprehension as Donnarumwma successfully negated Saka’s attempt that this could be the potentially incendiary moment that could put the infamous epitaph on England’s chequered football reputation.
From the record, jam-packed crowds that thronged Wembley throughout the tournament – some calling it is a recipe for disaster as a potential super spreader of the Covid virus, to the utter mismanagement of the rowdy crowds that looked to infiltrate the gates at Wembley before the final without tickets in hand, it led ultimately to the expression of anguish that saw mayhem on the streets, destruction of property and physical assault extending to Asian communities in addition to black and African sections of the population.
Looting, rioting, hooliganism, the aftermath has been less about the game itself on the field and more about the kind of behaviour that has made England an unpopular team to support around the world. And this is no reflection on the talent in the team, which is the unfortunate part of the story.
Some have called out the unrealistic expectations to be blamed for the aftermath. There has been consensus that perhaps the historic win over Germany in over half a century – 55 years to be precise – had taken its toll on the players and their multitudes of fans.
Although there was enough strategy on the part of the England team in not allowing the Germans gaps to finish their plays that would lead to goals, there was a worrying contention that England had made it through based on three brilliant moments in the game and had been undone by the precise Italians in the end.
This defeat to the patient Italians speaks to that fact because one of the common criticisms of Southgate and the England team from former England footballers was that the team had become too defensive after the first goal instead of looking to extend the gap.
The doorway that allowed the Italians back into the game is something that should be looked into as much as the three missed penalties, by essentially players who had either been blooded in too young and inexperienced at the business end of a high profile final such as this or who had barely got a foothold in the game in the course of the tournament and the match itself – being last-minute additions/substitutions on the field by the coach and therefore, short on confidence.
At 1 minute, 57th second, Luke Shaw made history as having scored the fastest goal in the Euro championship finals.
As England inched closer to making history, having never won the Euro championships and having last witnessed World Cup success back in 1966, the tournament was hailed as the homecoming of heroes – headlining the likes of captain Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Harry Maguire, goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and a host of young generation hopefuls that included Saka, Sancho, the flamboyant Jack Grealish, Declan Rice, amongst others.
The anti-climatic fashion that made many feel that the England football had been judged not on their performance or the inadequacy of it on the night – which would have been appropriate without the insidious barbs and insults – to see where they can improve before next year’s World Cup, but rather by the unbecoming behaviour of a rather alarming section of England’s football fans to the point where many concluded that England was undeserving of the champions tag tells the story of just how horribly wrong the script had gone on the night, on and off the field.