Well, I won't know the general consensus until tomorrow morning, but the fact is that England fall at the quarter-finals of yet another major competition - and on penalties. Again. However I have reason to be optimistic for what the future holds, apart from being an optimist that is.
England showed our best performance of the tournament in the first half, and we could perhaps have scored too. But as the game wore on, it was clear that we are inferior to our rival opposition with the ball. We just weren't able to use the ball at all, despite defending hard and winning it back often so well. Our game plan since day one under Hodgson has been to start from the back, wisely choosing to stay solid in defence, before unleashing any thrust and speed going forward, which you can't say we don't potentially have in Rooney, Welbeck, Walcott and Young. And the first part of this plan was executed to a tee tonight, with John Terry in particular, forming a tough wall preventing the Italians from netting all game; we got a clean sheet, remember.
The nation was never in high expectation going in Euro 2012, and that ought not to have changed having qualified to the knockout stages, albeit topping the group. And let's face it, I'd say we rode our luck to get this far, through both the tournament in general and in the 120 minutes against Italy too. Italy deserved to beat us this evening, but that's ok. England have been under new management for less than two months. This is where we build from. None of the players have individually under-performed, in fact many will take this as an invaluable experience, and actually the team has looked united and strong from the start. For me, that's the key, it's essential to success. We've got that down, so the team now have time to prepare in full, to get the tactics right and the chemistry flowing. Sure, there's a lot of work to do, but I'd say we're in a very good position to do it in.
