Spain
Italy beats Spain on penalties, reaches Euro 2020 final
Facing a wall of nervous blue-and-white clad Italy fans behind the goal, Jorginho took his trademark hop and skip before calmly stroking in the winning penalty.
So much for the pressure of a shootout in the European Championship semifinals.
A dash of Italian panache completed a 4-2 penalty-shootout win over Spain at Wembley Stadium on Tuesday, setting up a title match against either England or Denmark back at the same stadium on Sunday.
The match finished 1-1 after extra time and provided Italy with its toughest test of the tournament, with Spain controlling possession for long periods. Federico Chiesa scored for Italy with a curling shot in the 60th minute but substitute Alvaro Morata equalized for Spain in the 80th.
Read:Longtime tormentor Italy stands in way of Spain at Euro 2020
Morata, dropped from the starting lineup for the first time in a tournament during which he has received verbal abuse and even death threats from his own fans, will go down as Spain’s scapegoat once again after having a penalty saved by Gianluigi Donnarumma in the next-to-last kick of the shootout.
As he walked back to the center circle with his head bowed, Jorginho made the opposite journey and didn’t make the same mistake.
The Chelsea midfielder has his own style when it comes to taking penalties and he didn’t abandon it when it mattered most, sparking a throng of celebrations as Italy’s players sprinted from the halfway line.
Jorginho was mobbed. Italy coach Roberto Mancini was hugged by the rest of coaching staff. The players lined up on the edge of the area and ran together, holding hands, toward the fans.
Leonardo Bonucci went further, leaping over the advertising hoardings to get even closer to the crazed supporters whose loud cheering had lifted the team in their most difficult moments.
“We’re delighted we could provide this wonderful entertainment to the Italian people,” Mancini said. “One game to go.”
Riding a national record unbeaten run of 33 games, Italy will play in its fourth European final and look to win the title for a second time, after 1968.
It’s quite the redemption story for a country which failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
“This group is amazing,” Mancini said. “Everyone wants to win, but this group of players wanted to do something special.”
Read:Euro2020 semi-finalists have been determined
They have had the aura of champions since Day 1 of the tournament and they’ll be sticking around until the last day, too. But it’s at the home of English soccer where the team has had its toughest matches.
Against Austria in the round of 16, the Italians were taken to extra time at Wembley and they had to go the distance, too, against Spain.
Spain’s striker-free formation initially flummoxed the Azzurri, who have become a more progressive team under Mancini but were given a clinic at times in ball possession and movement in midfield.
Experienced center backs Giorgio Chiellini and Bonucci looked uncertain at times, not knowing whether to drop back or follow deep-lying forward Dani Olmo — who started ahead of Morata — into the center of midfield.
Spain’s pressing also drew some rash clearances from the back from Italy. That created the team’s best chance in the first half with Ferran Torres’ shot requiring a low save from Donnarumma.
The Italians had even more problems when Morata came on as a substitute but, by then, Chiesa had put them ahead after latching onto a loose ball, cutting inside and curling a shot into the far corner. It was his second goal at Wembley in this tournament, having scored just as impressively against Austria.
Morata’s movement stretched Italy’s defense to set up chances for Mikel Oyarzabal and Olmo. Then he scored for the third time at Euro 2020.
For a player often accused of wasting chances when he has too much time in front of goal, Morata showed calmness to sidefoot in a left-footed shot after exchanging passes with Olmo at the edge of the area.
Morata grabbed a camera behind the goal and thrust his face into it. But he had nowhere to hide after becoming the second Spain player to miss in the shootout — after Olmo — following 30 minutes of extra time.
Read:Denmark beats Czechs 2-1 to reach Euro 2020 semifinals
“He really has a lot of personality,” Spain coach Luis Enrique said of Morata. “He wanted to take a penalty even though he’s been through some tough times in this competition.”
Italy started the shootout with Manuel Locatelli’s shot saved by Unai Simon, but Andrea Belotti, Bonucci and Federico Bernardeschi all scored before Jorginho.
Spain, a three-time European champion, beat Switzerland in a penalty shootout just to get to Wembley. Having also been taken to extra time by Croatia in the last 16, the Spanish certainly took the long route to the semifinals but their journey ended there.
“Everyone made Italy big favorites,” Spain midfielder Sergio Busquets said, “but we demonstrated we were superior to them.”
Longtime tormentor Italy stands in way of Spain at Euro 2020
They are opponents who have long struck fear into the heart of Spanish soccer.
The Italians: tough, defensively strong, cynical. Winners by whatever means possible — or so it was widely perceived in Spain anyway.
And Luis Enrique knows all about it.
Read:Italy advances to semifinals at Euro 2020
The current Spain coach was a member of the national team that was beaten by Italy 1-0 in the 1994 World Cup quarterfinals. As famous as the 88th-minute winning goal by Roberto Baggio was the elbow to Luis Enrique’s face administered by Italy’s hard man in defense, Mauro Tassotti.
The violent act went unpunished during the game — Tassotti would later get an eight-match ban — but wasn’t forgotten in Spain. The photo of an anguished Luis Enrique, blood pouring from his broken nose onto a splattered white towel, has gone down in history, and is often brought out whenever the two rivals meet.
Like they will at Wembley Stadium on Tuesday in the European Championship semifinals.
“We’ve spoken a few times since but that’s in the past, part of footballing history,” Luis Enrique said Monday about the incident with Tassotti. “Both of us, of course, would’ve preferred that had gone differently but there’s nothing more to say.”
Actually, Luis Enrique doesn’t appear to hold any grudges toward the Azzurri, his feelings possibly changing after spending a year coaching Italian club Roma in the 2011-12 season.
“It’s a country I’m very fond of,” he said. “Whenever I’ve a bit of free time, I always like to visit Italy. It’s lovely to come up against the Azzurri — it’s always very nice.”
Many in Spain would disagree.
For 88 years, Spain didn’t beat Italy in a competitive match and an inferiority complex naturally grew. A clash of styles — typically attacking Spain against defensive Italy — always went one way.
Also read: Euro2020 semi-finalists have been determined
Until 2008, that is. That was when a weight was lifted from a nation as Spain defeated Italy in a penalty shootout in Vienna in the European Championship quarterfinals on its way to its first continental title in 44 years.
Four years later, Spain would beat Italy again at Euro 2012, this time 4-0 in Kyiv for the most lop-sided score in a final in the tournament’s history.
Yet Spain’s title defense was ended in the last 16 five years ago by a limited but tactically superior Italy coached by Antonio Conte, which won 2-0 in Paris.
The teams, then, will be meeting in a fourth straight tournament. This match promises to be different, though, purely because of the way Italy’s approach has altered since Roberto Mancini took over as coach in 2018.
Sure, the trademark Italian robustness in defense is still there, but the team has an attacking swagger these days and also has become more of a passing team. They’re not in Spain’s league in terms of possession, but then again who is?
“We’re leaders in the possession stats, but they too are a side who enjoy playing with the ball. So that’s going to be the first battle to win,” Luis Enrique said. “But they’re also very good without the ball. We need the ball. We want to have it.”
Spain has the squad with youngest average age in the tournament — at 24.1 years — and there’s a sense that Luis Enrique feels his players have exceeded expectations by reaching the semifinals.
It’s why he was so proud of getting past Switzerland in the quarterfinals, albeit with the need of a penalty shootout.
Also read: Italy advances to semifinals at Euro 2020
“It’s impossible to understate this,” he said. “We’re not an experienced national team.”
Indeed, when it comes to being streetwise at international level, few can top the Italians.
A clip of Italy striker Ciro Immobile falling dramatically in the area and apparently feigning injury during the win over Belgium in the quarterfinals, only for him to instantly spring to his feet moments later after Nicola Barella scored the opening goal, has been spread widely over social media.
Italy defender Leonardo Bonucci laughed it off on Monday, saying “the joy and excitement of a goal in matches such as these means you don’t experience any more pain.” But to some it was another classic example of gamesmanship.
It’s why players like Champions League winners Cesar Azpilicueta, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba will be so important for Spain to guide the team’s younger players at Wembley.
“We’re not an experienced team,” Luis Enrique said, “but it doesn’t mean we don’t have experience of the game. Many of our players have played at a very high level and are used to these games.
“I just hope we’re up to the challenge.”
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