Raphael Stevens

105+ 2’Tweet! Tweeeeeet! That’s it for the first extra period.We’re halfway to a shootout, which would be only the second in the history of the Euros. The first, in 1976, gave birth to the Panenka.105 + 1’An Italian handball offers a free kick to England in the dying seconds … Shaw is over it …103’Almost through the first extra period, Italy almost steals it: Emerson whips in a ball from the edge of the area and Bernardeschi — sailing through the air right in front of Pickford — somehow doesn’t collide with it.What a relief for England there. You could watch that four times and still not understand how … something didn’t go right/wrong (depending on your view) there.99’Jack Grealish, England’s favorite player for the last month, even when he didn’t play, has stripped off his warmups and is preparing to come on. The Aston Villa star brings creativity and fresh legs and, maybe, some good mojo. Mount departs.Remember: It was a substitute, Éder, who won the last Euros, for Portugal in 2016.92’Nasty foul by Emerson on Henderson there, setting a pick for Bernardeschi.On the sideline, Locatelli slips on, replacing Verratti.91’Another change from Italy: Torino’s Andrea Belotti comes on for Insigne up front. Fresh legs to run at a weary England back line.That means it’s an entirely changed Italy attack: Belotti, Bernardeschi and Berardi for Immobile, Chiesa and Insigne.FULL TIMEKuipers blows his whistle and shoulders drop across the field. We’re headed to extra time, just like the two semifinals.From Rory at Wembley:Quite how England lost control of a game it had in its palms is not easily parsed. For an hour, maybe a little more, Gareth Southgate would have had cause to be quietly — he knows no other way — satisfied. Italy had the ball, but England not just the lead, but some measure of control, too.Pool photo by Andy RainThat it ebbed away might be tactical: Roberto Mancini’s throwing on Domenico Berardi for the ineffectual Ciro Immobile. It might be physical: England had burned out a little in the first 20 minutes or so, and was now paying the price for its fire and fury.But more than anything, it was emotional: England dropped just a little too far, and Italy had a little too much space to play in; a couple of glimmers of goal were enough to revive hope in Mancini’s team. Leonardo Bonucci’s equalizer was the reward; for a few minutes, until the injury to Federico Chiesa drew the sting from the game, it seemed to have the bit between its teeth.England, from here, will dread penalties more than Italy. But England has the deeper resources in reserve to avoid them. The question may be when Southgate chooses to use them. More

As fans filled the streets outside Wembley again on Sunday ahead of the Euro 2020 final, it is worth remembering that it was not by chance that all four semifinalists — England, Italy, Spain and Denmark — played all three of their group games at home, reducing the amount of time and energy they might have lost to travel over the course of the monthlong championship.Scheduling, too, was most likely a relevant factor in how much Denmark tired in its semifinal against England, days after it had been forced to travel to Baku, Azerbaijan, in the previous round, while England had made the comparatively shorter trip — its only venture outside it borders in a month — to Rome.There is always a host nation at a major tournament, of course, and the host nation always has an advantage — in surroundings, in scheduling, in stadiums. But in ordinary circumstances, every team in the tournament takes a base in that country to reduce travel time. On a practical if not a spiritual level, the playing field is level.But even before the pandemic, Euro 2020 was a logistical nightmare: 11 stadiums in 11 cities spread across four time zones, all subject to different local conditions. There will be no appetite within European soccer to stage a pan-continental tournament again.And that, frankly, is a good thing. Not simply because something is lost, however slight and insignificant, when a tournament is not hosted by a single nation — drawing in fans from across the world, changing the fabric of the place it calls home, even if it is only for a month — but because the diffusion of the games has compromised the integrity of the competition.That does not mean either Italy or England will be an undeserving champion. They have been the two best teams in the tournament (rather than the two with the most talented individuals). Both warrant their places in the final. But both have enjoyed far from universal conditions.It would be helpful if that did not happen again. More

There are a lot of things that everybody knows about Harry Kane. There is the fact that he is the captain of England’s national soccer team, a status that bestows upon its bearer the sort of profile unavailable to most athletes, particularly in tournament years. It is part-of-the-furniture fame, royal family fame. Everyone has heard of Harry Kane.Then there are the goals. Harry Kane scores goals with startling efficiency. He scores goals with both feet and with his head. He scores goals from close range and from long distance, for good teams and bad. He does not really seem to be subject to things like form or confidence. He simply started scoring goals seven years ago and never stopped.He currently scores them for Tottenham Hotspur, but that, too, may be changing soon. In the buildup to Euro 2020, a drip feed of interviews has made it clear that, in Harry Kane’s mind, he may need to move on after this summer, if he is to fulfill his ambition of winning collective awards, rather than individual ones.There is one other thing we know about Kane, though, after the last month, one thing that stands out above all otherse.“England is No. 1 for me,” Kane said in an interview with The New York Times weeks before the Euros. “It is the biggest thing you can achieve. I dreamed of playing for England, but I also dreamed of winning something for England. That is on top of my list.“You play Premier Leagues and Champions Leagues every year, but a major tournament only comes around once every two years. The window is a lot smaller. To win something with England: That would be No. 1.” More

Sunday’s final at London’s Wembley Stadium is being broadcast in the United States by ESPN and Univision, and via their ESPN+ and TUDN streaming platforms. But, of course, many Times readers are not in the United States.To find out where you can watch the final in the country where you live — UEFA has television partners from Afghanistan and Albania to Zambia and Zimbabwe, and everywhere in between — search this list on the organization’s website.The teams, meanwhile, have arrived.Making our way to Wembley! 🚍#VivoAzzurro #ITA #ITAENG #EURO2020 pic.twitter.com/Wda8MlvhJj— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@azzurri) July 11, 2021
What a send-off! Thank you.🔜 @wembleystadium pic.twitter.com/NxlXgL8Igz— England (@England) July 11, 2021 More

Italy’s run to the final of Euro 2020 has, in many ways, highlighted a drastic shift in the country’s soccer culture. Roberto Mancini’s team is young, vibrant and adventurous, designed around a slick and technical midfield and imbued with a bright, attacking style.If it was that vision of Italy that carried the team through the group stage and helped it sweep aside first Austria and then Belgium in the knockout rounds, the team’s semifinal victory against Spain was built on a more familiar iteration: ruthless and redoubtable, cast not in the porcelain image of Lorenzo Insigne and Marco Verratti but the unyielding concrete of Bonucci and Chiellini.It is that Italy that England must overcome, on Sunday evening, if it is to lift the European Championship trophy: the Italy that not only finds pride in its defending but treats it with genuine relish. As Bonucci has previously said, “As a defender, you always like winning, 1-0.”On 24 March 2007, @chiellini played for Italy U21 in the first-ever official match at the new Wembley. Now, he’s back for a final 💙💪#VivoAzzurro #ITA #ITAENG #EURO2020 pic.twitter.com/toSAO3l06h— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@azzurri) July 11, 2021
It has been that way for years for Italy, of course. Chiellini made his national team debut in 2004; Bonucci, only two years younger but a much later bloomer, joined him in 2010. Between them, they now have made 219 appearances for their country, the vast majority of them in tandem. They are so inseparable, at both club and international level, that one of Google’s suggested searches for them is: “Are Chiellini and Bonucci related?”They are not, but even they admit they may as well be. “I think I know Bonucci better than I know my wife,” Chiellini has said. More

Every year is a big soccer year in Italy. When the national league finishes, victorious fans parade through city streets in their cars and mopeds. But it is during the international competitions that the Italian soccer fanaticism takes on a semblance of religious faith.“God Is Italian,” read the headline of a national sports newspaper earlier this week, exalting a victory over Spain in the semifinals. On Sunday, Italy will try to beat England, in London, to add a new chapter to its storied soccer history. It has already been quite a month.Four years after the national team faced the humiliation of failing to qualify for the World Cup, Italy — embracing a mix of youth and fun and its usual defensive excellence — has reset the expectations of its fans. This weekend, the team carries on its shoulders the hopes of a nation badly battered by the coronavirus but making its way out of the pandemic.Despite restrictions that still require masks and social distancing, especially indoors, people have been watching the games in large crowds and celebrating on the streets.“With all caution, people need some normality and the national team this year is a reason to be proud and joyful after so much suffering,” said Daniele Magnani, an amateur soccer coach, who was visiting the national soccer museum in Florence with his wife. More

UEFA ordered Hungary, which hosted some of the biggest crowds of the Euros in Budapest, to play its next three home matches behind closed doors as punishment for “the discriminatory behaviour of its supporters” during the tournament. The organization also fined the Hungarian soccer federation 100,000 euros ($118,000).UEFA, the governing body for soccer in Europe, had opened an investigation into charges that Hungary fans had carried homophobic banners and directed monkey noises at visiting players during Hungary’s group-stage matches in Budapest and Munich.Hungary played their first two games of the tournament against Portugal and France at Puskas Arena in Budapest, and then traveled to Munich for its final group game, against host Germany.UEFA had appointed an ethics and disciplinary inspector on June 20 to conduct a probe into “potential discriminatory incidents” during the matches in Hungary. Five days later, it expanded the investigation to include the game in Germany. More