hoshinohiro
Country: Japan
Registered: July 8, 2021
Last post: July 8, 2021 at 5:31 AM
Posts: 1

I think Denmark played a good game. I really liked how they pressed high up the pitch and didn't give England time to settle into much of a passing rhythm. They even had Pickford making lots of mistakes. That said, after 60 minutes they really tired (pressing will do that to a team) and England really took hold of the game. The option then from the Danes was to play a lot deeper and pack the defence and hope to hang on. That invites a lot of pressure, especially with players like Sterling, Saka and Mount who can run at you, and Kane who is good at holding up the ball in attacking areas. Letting these players into your box makes the risk of giving away a penalty or free kick in a dangerous area very real, and is something the Danish did not want to do (but they were tired and couldn't contain England higher up the pitch).

I don't think it was an England penalty, but there were two other penalty calls for England which could easily have been given and a goal was looking increasingly likely. England had a lot of excellent chances, you could argue that the shots weren't convincing, but Maguire's header with a finger tip save from Schmeichel, and Sterling's effort saved by the body of Schmeichel are absolute get out of jail saves that would 9 times out of 10 find the back of the net. As such I think it's hard to say that England did not make chances to win the game. I would say most people agree with me as Kasper Schmeichel was voted man of the match in most places... So many people feel the Danish keeper kept the Danes in the game. I think that's why this result hurts so much, because the heroic keeper was beaten by a dubious penalty.

That brings me to the refereeing, which was probably some of the worst I have seen in the tournament. The standard of refereeing in this tournament has been fantastic, but the ref in this game was below average (not terrible though). His decision making was very inconsistent, he often missed clear fouls and gave fouls when there weren't any. The free kick for the Danish goal was very very strange, Luke Shaw was grappling with a player during the first free kick, but it was a complete mess and was not set up properly, every player was doing the same thing and the ref really should have sorted it out before letting the first free kick be taken. To pick out Shaw for wrestling just seemed really strange to me. The biggest problem I had with the ref was his use of yellow cards, he gave one to Maguire for attacking the ball in an offensive area and a trailing arm, but Vestergaard (who was great in this game) performed at least 4 cynical fouls and received nothing, Paulsen similarly escaped a yellow and I just could not understand it. Vestergaard was a total beast in this game, but if he had been yellow carded as he should have been for body checking Saka early in the game he would not have been able to be so physical and I think England would have been able to take advantage.

Anyway, all in all as a neutral, I think it's hard to say England did not deserve to win, but it really could of gone either way. I would have liked to see the Danes win, but they were too tired. If England play like this in the final, I don't think they have much chance against Italy, who can be direct when needed, use the ball very well and are experts in managing a game from start to finish; they could make the English look very naive! That said, the beauty of football is that anything can happen - looking forward to watching the final on Sunday!

posted about 2 years ago