Am I the only one watching this? England certainly left it late to equalise in injury time. Extra time looms.

I'm watching it too. I'd about written us off when the equaliser went in! You can't take your eyes off it for a moment.

Penalty!

Come on!

WE DID IT, ON TO THE FINAL!

That was really exciting.

Congratulations to England. In the final once again. Left it late once again. But what a tremendous comeback. These ladies never know when they are beaten. Looking forward to the final.

Yeah watched it all. I’m almost as happy to see Italy lose as England win. One day football will have to do something about the time-wasting and acting, but tonight though the good gals won. Super impressed by players like Hemp, Walsh and the girls at the back - absolute class

What a fantastic match, the girls did England proud. Lucy Bronze and Hemp stood out for me, absolute warriors. I do think that after the Sweden game and what happened Sarina Wiegman could of brought our saviours Michelle Agyemang and Chloe Kelly on a little earlier 🤔

Another heroine for us was the goalie Hannah Hampton, as that double save she made late on was mind blowing.

All in all WELL DONE LIONESSES 🦁

Maybe the England's Men team should take a Leaf out of the Lionesses play book and keep fighting till the end. It ain't Over till it's Over.

Lets hope the Magpies adopt the same Strategy for the coming Season.

Agree with the comments above.A fantastic performance by our girls.It was justice for all the time wasting and dodgy tactics by the Italians and might teach the Italian fans not to celebrate until the final whistle.

So it is going to be England v Spain in the final, a repeat of the World Cup Final of 2023.

It will be a very tough match. Can the England women gain revenge?

I’ve only seen bits of the matches. When the Lionesses play well, they look unbeatable and very organised. In the later stages, though, it sometimes felt like luck helped them through.

I thought Italy would go through. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, but because Italy seemed to have the win in their grasp.

Italy defended strongly, and their keeper has been one of the best I’ve seen in the games and highlights I’ve watched.

Just now, super_ram said:

Agree with the comments above.A fantastic performance by our girls.It was justice for all the time wasting and dodgy tactics by the Italians and might teach the Italian fans not to celebrate until the final whistle.

One day a cheating team may figure out all their antics are counterproductive. England were not creating chances. I genuinely believe that if Italy had just played and tried to get to the final whistle as quickly as possible (instead of as slowly as possible through time wasting) they would’ve got through. All the extra time allows the opposition to strategize, the subs to acclimatize. Without the stoppages, England wouldn’t have figured it out and equalized IMO.

8 hours ago, theAnticlough said:

One day a cheating team may figure out all their antics are counterproductive. England were not creating chances. I genuinely believe that if Italy had just played and tried to get to the final whistle as quickly as possible (instead of as slowly as possible through time wasting) they would’ve got through. All the extra time allows the opposition to strategize, the subs to acclimatize. Without the stoppages, England wouldn’t have figured it out and equalized IMO.

I agree entirely @theAnticlough the extra time didn’t do Italy any favours at all, they should have just got on with the game instead of that horrible phrase “game management” they were very strong defensively and England were struggling to break them down.

Teams that have a slender lead always try to waste time by trying to slow the game down with all sorts of negative tactics.

Some of those well known tactics include, feigning injury, committing lots of fouls to break up play, falling over at every opportunity, substituting players with just a minute or so to go, & taking the ball to the opponents corner flag to waste time.

At the end of the day it worked in England's favour with the extra time that was played. You would think that teams would stop doing this, but it's been part of the game as long as I can remember, & I don't believe it will ever change

It's getting worse if anything, but where there's a will there's a way.

I personally think it's bound to be tackled sooner or later, for this mass viewing age it's just too annoying and unwatchable to be tolerated indefinitely. Or maybe the physio coming on for a playactor will be the cue for ad breaks ;)

I thought it was crazy last season to hear our ex-coach admit that 'Bassy' went down to stop the game. There's 10K+ who have paid to watch football and 1000s more on streams. I wish more people would think 'hey, it's my time your wasting as well! Just through that I'm going to get home at 5:35 instead of 5:30 and that's just the start'

Looking forward to today's final. It'd be great if we could finally beat Spain in a major football final.

I don't think we're favourites though. Our defenders, Hemp and Walsh are outstanding and Agyemang is a real threat. But Spain have strength all round too and then have the real ace to play - Bonmati.

I watched most of the knock-out games and they were usually tight affairs. The deadlock in Spain's matches was broken by pieces of magic, which is what major international competitions should be all about.

Who else would play the back-heel pass to break the deadlock against the the hosts?

Then in the semi against Germany, the focus would be on her finish from the really narrow angle, but it was the trick to throw off the big German defender which made the goal. Pretending to be flat-footed, letting the ball roll thru her legs beat the defender all ends up and despite being twice the size of Bonmati she never made up the ground. Two flashes of genius got Spain to the final, and that's what we're up against.