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