The first finalist of the European Football Championship was the Italian national team. In the London semifinal match with the Spaniards, she was very close to victory and defeat, and her success – after a draw in regulation and extra time with a score of 1: 1 – brought a penalty shootout.
This match was a real detective, in which nothing is clear. He made you believe in something, and then he broke the faith into small pieces.
For about ten minutes, the London match convinced that the Italian national team was better prepared for it, that it clearly surpasses its rivals not only in the number of fans in the stands at Wembley, but as proof that there are much more Italians, a terrible whistle became a terrible whistle whenever the Spaniards received the ball. But the fact of the matter is that there were few reasons to whistle. What, the Italians managed to deprive the Spanish team of their favorite weapon – possession ?! But it seems, in order not to lose him in any case, her coach Luis Enrique left Alvaro Morata on the bench. He left not in order to send ahead, say, Gerard Moreno, but simply because he decided to do without highly specialized forwards.
Meanwhile, the Italian national team created the moment. And even if Nicolo Barella hit the post from “offside” – it’s still a symptom, a sign.
It turned out that this is nonsense, this is not a symptom at all, since the Spanish national team took the ball for themselves. And then went the beloved Spanish tiki-taka – exemplary, such as this team showed during its heyday at the turn of the last and the last decades – the defenders’ head spinning, spiced with not soft pressure. And it already seemed that the Italians were about to be crushed. Moreover, the pass of the impeccable in his 18 years Pedri passed to Mikel Oyarsabal, who would have better handle the ball – then he would have dealt face to face with goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.
And then the Italian team showed teeth again, and Emerson showed that he was wrongly called an absolutely inadequate replacement on the left flank for Leonardo Spinazzola, who broke Achilles. He also knows how to connect. The dribbling is really not that sophisticated, but the speed is enough to get away from the tenacious Cesar Azpilicueta.
And the Spanish national team, having waited out a five-minute period of someone else’s activity, gave the opponents a thrashing in response. And Dani Olmo still managed to find himself in the penalty area in front of Donnarumma, breaking through Leonardo Bonucci. The goalkeeper resisted. And hot Spanish fans began to bombard the pages of notable media resources with the online broadcast of the match with the same type of comments: God, we needed Morata! He would have scored.
And after a quarter of an hour there were three times more such comments. The Spanish fans were indignant when they saw the same Olmo and Oyarzabal launching the ball into the heavens. And they didn’t care that, in general, Enrique’s strategy seemed to work, that the Italians were terribly hard.
But the Italian national team, as it turned out, did not say their last word in the first half. She said it when, before the whistle for a break, she went on the attack and caught the Spaniards. Lorenzo Insigne passed a pass to Emerson, who shot insanely dangerous – the ball licked the crossbar.
And the Spanish national team opened the second half with such an assault that it seemed that it was impossible to resist against him – interceptions, jerks, crossings into the penalty area, Oyarzabal, winding up Giorgio Chiellini, Sergio Busquets, shooting for the slaughter from two dozen meters, but slightly missing … Yes, it was natural torture for the Italians. After this, it takes a long time to come to oneself.
And suddenly, in the middle of this storm, Gianluigi Donnarumma, taking the ball in his hands, somehow calmly and quickly, as if the position did not scream about a pause, about a breath of air, introduced it into the game, dispersing some even inappropriate Italian counterattack. And Marco Verratti just as calmly passed to Lorenzo Insigne. And Lorenzo Insigne found Ciro Immobile … Immobile was knocked out of the ball, but Federico Chiesa jumped up to him like a devil from the snuffbox, and a second later dealt with both Eric Garcia and the goalkeeper Unai Simon. The Italians, who, based on the pattern of the game, should have lost, took the lead.
And the Spaniards ruined another chance in response. Koke’s serve on Mikel Oyarsabal was lovely – slim, comfortable. Oyarsabal’s headbutt point-blank was terrible – not in the right direction at all. And gave rise to a new flurry of calls for Enrique to release someone who knows how to realize the chances. The Spanish mentor, however, himself understood that his plan was failing: Alvaro Morata and Gerard Moreno appeared on the Wembley lawn with an interval of several minutes.
And soon Spain heaved a sigh of relief: Luis Enrique was not late with the most important replacements. The Italians, elated by their luck, still slightly tormented their opponents, and Chiesa almost scored an assist by Domenico Berardi, but the Spaniards were slowly regaining their confidence. And now they are already pressing again, and Olmo finally finds such an addressee for the “wall”, for the decisive pass, who will never give up in front of Donnarumma. The addressee was, of course, Morata.
This bloody thriller of the main time, one and a half hours to reveal the winner, could not be enough. He taxied to overtime, in which the more recent Spaniards continued to pressurize and in which the Italian national team proved that its genes passed down from generation have not disappeared anywhere: they know how to survive, even when there is no oxygen at all. Moreover, being pressed securely, as rivals think, to the wall, knows how to bite evilly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHBcRXYrzfA
In general, overtime was not enough for this bloody thriller. It had to be crowned with a shootout in a penalty shootout – a nervous one, with the feats of goalkeepers and the failures of the hitters. Including the feat of Donnarumma and the failure of the seemingly most reliable of the Spanish penalty takers, Morata, who outright lost his fight. The Italian national team reached the final, in which they will meet with the winner of the second semi-final. The English and Danish teams will play there on Wednesday.
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