Bukayo Saka erased his Euro 2020 nightmare with a brilliant shoot-out penalty for England and insisted he now has his sights set on making history for his country by winning Euro 2024 straight away.
Before his penalty save, Saka had already delivered a man of the match performance with a superb 80th-minute equaliser. In 2021, as a 19-year-old, Saka missed a crucial final penalty in the Euro 2020 shootout and was subsequently subjected to racist abuse. That’s when he confidently fired a shot to the right of Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer.
“You can fail once, but it’s up to you to decide if you want to put yourself in that situation again, and I’m the guy to put myself in that situation,” Saka said. “It’s something I accept. I believed in myself and when I saw the ball hit the net, I was a very happy man.”
“I wasn’t focusing on the past. That’s over now and I can just focus on the present. Of course, I know there were a lot of people in the crowd who were nervous, including my family, but I kept my cool and scored. We have some of the best penalty takers in the world and we had talked about being confident if we went for a penalty. I’m happy to have shown that confidence today and gotten a perfect five-point score.”
“Look, we know we’re two games away from changing lives and making history. We’re going to have fun tonight, but we’re really focused on that.”
Gareth Southgate, who missed a penalty in the Euro 96 semi-final, celebrated with his players and admitted the moment was particularly sweet given the personal criticism he had received.
“You need to have fun in this job sometimes. If you’re not enjoying the moment it’s all a waste of time,” Southgate said. [the criticism] It’s as personal as it ever was, and difficult on a human level, but we’re fighting and we’re not going to stop fighting.”
He argued that the penalty shoot-out process the team has adopted since he took over, including consulting a professor at the London School of Economics, has helped England break their penalty shoot-out curse. Under Southgate, England have won three shoot-outs in the competition, beating Colombia in 2018 and Switzerland again in the Nations League in 2019, but previously lost high-profile shoot-outs in 1990, 1996, 2004, 2006 and 2012.
After newsletter promotion
“We were blamed for losing, and that always will be the case because it depends on the result,” Southgate said. “We improved our process a bit after that but the players have got to show composure. There were a lot of stories. Cole [Palmer] First time filming at his age; Bukayo; We almost fired Jude [Bellingham] Because we expect it now. Ivan [Toney]I knew that’s why I called him, Trent. [Alexander-Arnold]”I kept working on my assignments. He could have easily thought the tournament was over, but I kept talking to him and telling him his moment would come.”
