AND THEN THERE were two.
The penultimate episode of our Euro 2020 series of The Football Family podcast sees Shane Keegan and David Sneyd join us once again to assess England’s progress to Sunday’s final, and their prospects against Italy at Wembley.
There was plenty to discuss – most notably the awarding of a controversial penalty to Raheem Sterling that paved the way for Harry Kane to score a goal that eliminated Denmark, while ending England’s 55-year wait to reach the final of a major tournament.
“We’ve constantly talked about the Italians and how smart they play in how they go about things, so it would be a bit hypocritical not to be praising Sterling for how he went about it as well. It was very clever,” David said.
“I don’t think it is cheating. My first instinct when I saw it was that it was a penalty, so you can see why the referee did give it, but then when you look at it back, there’s not enough contact there.
“There is contact, so you’re going to go down, but you would think with VAR in the semi-final of a Euros that it can’t be given, let the ref have a look at it. But it was given and you just have to accept it.
“That’s football. If Raheem Sterling doesn’t go down, he gets absolutely slaughtered by his manager and team-mates. It’s clever play, it really is.”
Shane added: “I think if this is any other team in world football, this furore doesn’t exist. I saw so much crap between social media and the [RTÉ] studio last night.”
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