GIANLUIGI THE GIANT IS THE HERO FOR ITALIANS
KRIS COMMONS
THERE’S a good reason why Paris Saint-Germain have decided to pay Gianluigi Donnarumma £200,000 per week to take him from AC Milan.
Even at just 22 years old, the young Italian has already established himself as arguably the best goalkeeper in Europe over the past few years.
Since making his debut for Milan at just 16, he has grown into a 6ft 5ins giant of the game — as England discovered to their cost at Wembley last night.
Donnarumma made vital saves from Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka in the shootout as England were left to ponder what will rank as a huge missed opportunity.
Make no mistake, for this group of players, this will be the most painful night in their entire career. To lose a final of a major tournament on home soil would be tough enough.
But to lose it on penalties is just agonising. But the reality for England was that they had the opportunity of a lifetime and let it slip after taking an early lead.
Playing six of their seven games at Wembley, they won’t ever get a better chance to win a major tournament.
Italy barely fired a shot in the first half. England probably couldn’t believe their luck in terms of how straightforward things were for them in those opening 45 minutes.
Jordan Pickford was largely untroubled. The fact that Italy’s main striker Ciro Immobile was hooked early in the second half told its own story.
Immobile failed to find the net in any of the games in the knockout stage — and he certainly doesn’t look the same player as he does at club level with Lazio. Immobile has scored 150 goals in just over 200 games for Lazio across the past five seasons. He averages 30 goals per season in all competitions.
That’s a phenomenal strike-rate. You just wonder how good this Italy team could be if he could replicate that sort of form with the national team.
Yet, despite their struggles in the first half, Italy were never going to simply lie down and accept their fate.
You don’t go 30-odd games unbeaten without having an incredible amount of resilience and self-belief that you can always triumph in adversity.
The two players who probably typify that more than anyone else in this Italy side are Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci, the two old warriors at centre-back.
The Juventus team-mates have 221 caps between them. Together they have a combined total of 18 Serie A winner’s medals.
It was fitting that it should be Bonucci who scored the goal that got Italy back in the game midway through the second half.
England just seemed to tire as the game wore on. They retreated deeper and deeper into their own half as Italy began to dominate possession.
Jorginho and Marco Verratti were dictating the tempo of the game as their class really shone through, and England looked like they were chasing shadows at times.
Jack Grealish was the player that England fans had been crying out for throughout the tournament. There was a real sense of frustration among the supporters that he hadn’t played more in the games leading up to the final.
Bearing in mind that Grealish is likely to soon become the most expensive English player in history if he seals a £100million move from Aston Villa to Manchester City as expected.
But Grealish just couldn’t quite get on the ball enough when he
eventually came off the bench in extra-time. He ended up on the receiving of a really nasty challenge from Jorginho.
In the end, England must be kicking themselves for the way they just allowed the game to drift away from them.
I don’t know whether it’s part of Gareth Southgate’s make-up as a coach in the sense that he used to be a defender in his playing career. But England became tentative. It felt like they were trying to hold on to their 1-0 lead from an early stage, rather than being aggressive and looking for a second. It was a huge missed opportunity.
On a side note, the scenes outside Wembley prior to the game were honestly just embarrassing.
I saw some of the videos on social media and it made me cringe when I saw the idiotic behaviour of some fully grown men.
But, sadly, there’s part of me which felt like it was always on the cards. There’s a hooligan element to the England supporters. Not all of them, of course, but a minority who always struggle to behave themselves.
An 8pm kick-off to a party on their own doorstep, after a full afternoon drinking session, always looked like it could be trouble.