England Loses On Penalties Again

Wayne Rooney

Roy Hodgson´s Eng­land play­ers were defeated 4–2 on pen­al­ties by a well drilled and con­fid­ent Italy team after a goal­less 120 minutes at the Olympic Sta­dium in Kiev on Sunday. Ash­ley Young and Ash­ley Cole both missed from the pen­alty spot as The Three Lions were knocked out of the 2012 European Cham­pi­on­ships tournament.

In the third minute of the encounter, The Azzurro almost went into an early lead when a mag­ni­fi­cent Daniele de Rossi vol­ley from some 30 yards out hit the out­side of the post. A mere two minutes later, though, Glen John­son had a fant­astic oppor­tun­ity to score for his coun­try but his close range shot was effect­ively saved by exper­i­enced Juventus net­minder Gian­luigi Buffon. And although Cesare Prandelli´s troops dom­in­ated the pos­ses­sion of the ball, they found it dif­fi­cult to break down the pad­lock defence of the oppos­i­tion. The Three Lions nearly grabbed the win­ner, how­ever, when a spec­tac­u­lar over­head kick from Wayne Rooney went just over the cross­bar in the clos­ing stages of the encounter. But as extra time approached with neither Eng­land nor Italy hav­ing found the net, both teams walked the tightrope of ten­sion and the first ninety minutes ended in equi­lib­rium. The Roman legion­naires had the ball in the back of the net twenty-five minutes into extra time in the European Cham­pi­on­ships Quarter Final but Ant­o­nio Nocerino’s headed goal from close range was right­fully ruled out by the obser­v­ant lines­man for off­side. With the score­board read­ing 0–0 after 120 minutes of play, the hard fought con­test went into a high noon shoot out which the blue shirts even­tu­ally won by 4–2. Eng­land: Joe Hart, Glen John­son, Joleon Lescott, John Terry, Ash­ley Cole, James Mil­ner, Steven Ger­rard, Scott Parker, Wayne Rooney, Ash­ley Young, Danny Wel­beck. Sub­sti­tutes: Andy Car­roll, Jordan Hende­r­son, Theo Wal­cott, Leighton Baines, Stew­art Down­ing, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

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