Maybe England deserved to lose
By Letter to the Editor on July 16, 2021.
Editor:
Like many ex-pats I spent a good deal of time watching most of the games from the UEFA Euro 2020 competition. Being born in England and having watched the 1966 World Cup win by England on an older grainy TV the year before my family and I emigrated, I was naturally excited to see the England squad reach a final again after many years of drought. Obviously the final result was not to my liking. This morning I read with interest the article “Italy wins, Euro 2020 championship” to see if it was a fair report. The last sentence which ended with “after Shaw’s goal, England barely saw the ball for the rest of the game”, made me read the article again and decided not only was this not entirely true it struck me as a typical Anglo-bashing comment. Granted Italy did have much of the play after the opening 20 minutes or so, but were only able to score one scrappy goal in reply to Shaw’s excellent tally in the second minute of play. The article also failed to note that England’s goalkeeper Pickford had only conceded once in the whole tournament before Sunday’s final, that to an excellent free kick by the exciting Denmark team in the semi-final.
Italy are justifiably very happy with their win, but a better selection of penalty takers by the England manager could have seen a far different result. As captain Harry Kane said “we should be proud’ – unfortunately many of the England players showed poor sportsmanship and removed their silver medals immediately after they were presented. Maybe they did deserve to lose after all?
Geoff Bradshaw
Lethbridge
-1
Deciding a championship on a shootout is ridiculous! You play overtime as a TEAM until someone scores. Keep playing overtime..have breaks like hockey. You would have not had the racist comments or incidents post game.
That said, Italy played for the tie because they knew they’d close it out in the shootout.
C’mon soccer/football, get your act together!
shootouts for championships are absurd. why not just have every player on each team take their kick from the start, and call it a game. there has got to be a better way…and there is.
as for the racism that followed, what a sinking feeling. we still have so many idiots in the midst. i refer not only to the intolerant ignoramuses, but also to cultures that have been conditioned to place so much emphasis on professional sports. a lot of time, energy and resource into what truly is much ado about nothing.