Gareth Southgate takes responsibility for England’s penalty heartbreak at Euro 2020

Gareth Southgate shouldered the blame for England’s Euro 2020 final penalty shootout loss to Italy and told his young side to hold their heads high after a historic summer came to a crushing end.

Football is going to Rome rather than coming home after the Three Lions fell agonisingly short of replicating the World Cup triumph of 1966 at a rocking Wembley.

Luke Shaw fired England into a dream lead inside 117 seconds but Roberto Mancini’s men grew into Sunday’s final, with Leonardo Bonucci levelling to take the match to extra-time.

It ended 1-1 under the arch as the match went to spot-kicks and, just like the last major tournament played on home soil 25 years ago, it ended in penalty heartbreak.

[foxon]

What about taking responsibility for playing defensive football for 120 mins thus resulting in penalties!?

[jasondevon]

Playing 2 defensive midfielders when you already have 3 at the back is way too negative, especially given our unused world class attacking players. Also, Saka is just not good enough and nowhere near the level of the others. Southgate made a mess of this final.

[clipped]

Southgate completely bottled his selection he should of of let grealish take it. Grealish quoted sky sports tweet and said "I said I wanted to take one!!!!
The gaffer has made so many right decisions through this tournament and he did tonight! But I won’t have people say that I didn’t want to take a peno when I said I will…" Southgate is a moron for picking sancho, rashford and saka take pens. Pickford even saved 2/5 thats almost a guarantee win with right pen takers. It's not hard to choose 5 plays FFS

[kingkenny]

He doesn’t have to take responsibility. We already know it’s his fault. He bottled it. It was 96 all over again for him.