Gary Neville feels England manager Gareth Southgate should have made two substitutes at halftime as Spain took control of the Euro 2024 Final.
While the score remained 0-0 at halftime, Spain were unquestionably the more dominant team, dominating possession and restricting England just one half-chance in the first 45 minutes.
Spain manager Luis de la Fuente was forced to make a change at halftime, with Martin Zubimendi replacing injured Manchester City midfielder Rodri, but Southgate retained the same lineup for the second half.
Nico Williams, who is attracting interest from Barcelona, Arsenal, and Chelsea, got space in the area and tapped past Jordan Pickford to break the deadlock less than two minutes after the restart for La Roja.
After a further fourteen minutes, Southgate eventually substituted Ollie Watkins for the useless Harry Kane, while Kobbie Mainoo was replaced by Cole Palmer.
And it was the Chelsea playmaker who rifled home England’s equaliser from the edge of the box just three minutes after coming on, the Three Lions sensing another comeback after going behind in their three previous knockout games.
But it was De la Fuente’s substitute Mikel Oyarzabal who popped up with the winner late on, losing his marker and diverting Marc Cucurella’s cross into the bottom corner to give Spain a record fourth European Championship trophy.
Neville was surprised Southgate did not try to alter the course of the match at half-time and says he would have brought off Kane for Watkins and also introduced Anthony Gordon, presumably for Mainoo.
‘Look, I’m just in the stadium on television while Gareth Southgate is in the hot seat and there’s a reason for that,’ Neville told Sky Sports.
‘But at half-time I felt Ollie Watkins should have come on for Harry Kane and Anthony Gordon should come in on the left, with Jude Bellingham move back into central midfield.
‘I just felt we needed Watkins, Saka and Gordon up top. We were playing deep, we were being pushed back deep by a fantastic Spain team.
‘When you’re playing deep you need to be able to counter-attack but we didn’t have that. We needed to be able to travel from box to box and get players on to carry the ball with pace.
‘Those are the two changes I thought would have happened.’
England goalscorer Palmer was ‘gutted’ his strike was in a losing cause but insisted there were ‘positives’ to take from another run to the Euros finals.
‘Spain have been brilliant all tournament, everyone has seen what they can do so congratulations from them,’ he told ITV.
‘I’m gutted. We got to another final, there’s positives to take but everyone wanted to go one step further and we didn’t.
‘Gareth’s been amazing for the group. We’ve got to back-to-back finals so it’s been good.’