LIONS TAKE PRIDE

GARETH SOUTHGATE will be encouraged by the last England game, despite that ridiculous late penalty decision against his team.

Well, I say ridiculous. You can debate either way whether it was a foul or not.

But the rules say it must be ‘clear and obvious’ — so therefore the referee’s original decision should have stood.

I’m a striker, so I’m always going to come down on the side of the forward. The defender caught him, so I would be wanting a penalty.

Yet I’m surprised that more people didn’t point out that the only reason the Italy striker Chiesa had his foot there in the first place, was because he was in the process of going down as he anticipated James Tarkowski’s challenge.

Tarkowski was clever, he held off the challenge, and I’m convinced Chiesa was going down anyway... which is why he had thrown his foot back in an exaggerated way, and why the ref didn’t give a penalty initially, because he saw there was no contact.

It’s a bit of a mess though isn’t it? The ref’s instinct was probably right, yet he overruled himself, because he saw another contact — one that might never have happened had the Italy forward not gone looking for a pen!

The bottom line for England was they were by far the better team until they ran out of gas in the final 15 minutes.

It’s encouraging, but I know Southgate (above) will be praying Harry Kane gets back and firing before June.

If they are going to play that way, with a patient buildup against the best teams in the world, they’ll need a cutting edge up front, and Kane is about the only Englishman around at the moment who really has that.