02:33 PM
Knee news
“Germany captain Manuel Neuer says the team will join the England players in taking a knee against racism before their European Championship game at Wembley Stadium”
02:32 PM
England fans assemble
02:30 PM
I think we need to talk about the ‘P’ word
Telegraph galaxy brain Tim Wigmore, most normally spotted coming up with brilliant theories about T20 cricket, has turned his analytical mind to penalty kicks. This is well worth a butcher’s…
Revealed: The secrets to winning a penalty shoot-out – and why England are now so good at them
02:26 PM
And here’s the non-cropped picture
02:25 PM
Always great to see a politician getting behind the national side
Come on England! Score a wicket! Let’s level up! I predict Four footys to two on penalty tiebreaks.
02:21 PM
The Germans are arriving
02:19 PM
Resident Scotland fan Michael Deacon writes
“Whatever the outcome, this match between England and Germany is a footballing milestone. An unprecedented moment in the history of the game. As far as I am concerned, at any rate. Because I am a Scotland fan. And tonight, for the first time ever, I will be supporting England.
It is a strange and unsettling development. Like most Scotland fans, I have hitherto spent my days living in terror that England might finally win another trophy. Our blood runs cold each time an England team advance beyond the group stage. Only after the final English penalty has cleared the stand behind the goal have we felt able to breathe, relax and enjoy the tournament.
To be clear: this is not xenophobic. It is not anti-English. I love England. I have lived here for the past 20 years. I have an English wife and an English son. This is purely a footballing rivalry. The faithful observance of an age-old sporting tradition. I am from Scotland, therefore I take comfort in seeing the England football team do almost as badly as the Scotland football team. Nothing more to it than that.”
02:16 PM
Starting to get busy!
02:02 PM
Is international football better than the club game?
Many of us might defer our opinion on that until about 7.15pm this evening – but not the fearless Thom Gibbs. He’s nailed his colours to the mast of nation state vs nation state as the apogee of the sport.
01:49 PM
Strong suggestion of the municipal swimming pool
about the colourings here. Hopefully England can keep their heads above water later
01:44 PM
What would your formation be?
01:41 PM
Scarfers
01:37 PM
TV news – this one is on the BBC
And they’ll be hoping to top the below chart, although to be fair the start time is not in their favour.
Most watched games so far…
England v Scotland 19.9m peak, 4.8m streams (STV & ITV and ITV Hub)
England v Czech Republic 14.6m peak, 4.4m streams [ITV and ITV Hub]
England v Croatia 11.6m 4.5m streams [BBC and BBC iplayer]
France v Switzerland 11.3m [ITV]
Belgium v Portugal 10.5m peak, 3.4m streams [ITV and ITV Hub]
01:31 PM
Nice vid here with Gary and Bobby Hundreds
01:22 PM
This is the moment
Chief sportswriter Oliver Brown says that the time is now. No more near misses. England have the players, the home advantage, and they should be backed to deliver.
It flies in the face of all logic, this popular notion that England must still be haunted by a Wembley trauma 25 years old. The average age of Gareth Southgate’s squad at this European Championship is 24.8. Not only do these players lack any recollection of Stuart Pearce being mocked up in a tin hat, or of their own manager choking back tears in Terry Venables’ arms, most of them had not even been born. Unencumbered by the emotional freight of facing Germany, they have the joyous liberty of knowing that they can create folklore of their own, free from the manacles of a distant past.
This is England’s moment – they must come out swinging without fear
01:20 PM
For St George
01:07 PM
Foden fan club?
12:55 PM
Dress-up!
12:47 PM
Gareth has some questions to answer
Will it be a back three? Will it be a back four? Two men who know more about this than pretty much anyone else are Mr Jason Burt and Mr Matt Law; here is there thoughts on how Gareth might deploy a back three with which to take on England’s deadliest footballing foe.
12:28 PM
England vs Germany match coming up
And let us start with the thing that is on the mind of every England fan: penalties. Over to you, Matt Law.
England players are making the dreaded “walk of death” as they practise penalties ahead of the European Championship last-16 tie against Germany.
Germany beat England on penalties the last time the countries met in a major tournament at Wembley, in 1996 when Gareth Southgate missed.
Germany also won on penalties at the 1990 World Cup. England beat Colombia on penalties at the World Cup in 2018 and Southgate makes players practise penalties at the end of each training session, with assistant Steve Holland keeping a leaderboard. That means Holland has three years of penalty data since the World Cup. England players attempt to recreate some of the tension of a real shoot-out when they practise.
Each makes the “walk of death” from the halfway line before placing the ball and waiting for the whistle. Some like to keep their eyes focused on an object as they walk from the halfway line to block out the pressure.
“In training, we do it properly,” Declan Rice said. “There is a whistle and you can take your time and get yourself in the zone. You get yourself in the position you want to run up to the ball. You can take as many as possible and stay out there as long as you want. You want to be in the zone and strike the ball as you want, so that when it comes you know where you want to put the ball. It’s just repetition for me.”
Asked if he would take a penalty against Germany in a shoot-out, the midfielder said: “Definitely. A couple of years ago, I would have said no. But, where I have started to take responsibility at club level now, there is a process in your mind that you can go up there and put the ball in the back of the net. We have been successful in the World Cup in the shoot-out and the Nations League, so as a group we know the process and what you have to go through. It’s about mentally going up there and picking your spot and putting the ball in the back of the net.”
Rice scored one penalty and missed another for West Ham United last season and revealed some of the techniques he had used to improve since missing three decisive penalties while in the Chelsea academy.
“Three different tournaments at Chelsea as kids and three chances to win it for the team, and I missed all three,” Rice said. “That doesn’t sound very good. I felt back then, as a kid being away with the pressure to win a tournament and the excitement, going up to the ball I was nervous.
“It’s funny and weird saying it now with fans watching, but for me I’ve been practising them all season at West Ham and now I’ve come here, it’s just about that process in my head. When the ref blows his whistle, you don’t have to go when that happens. You can give yourself those extra few seconds, breathing techniques, just to relax yourself.
“It’s all about visualisation, how you’re going to put the ball in the back of the net. These are things I started to develop as I got older, so I’m just trying to practise and if my name is called upon, I’m positive I can put the ball away.”
Other than Rice, Manchester City’s Phil Foden, who scored against Japan in a shoot-out for England at the Under-17 World Cup in 2017, confirmed he would volunteer for a penalty by saying: “If I’m on the pitch at the time, why not? I feel confident to take one. I shoot them well in training, so why not?”
England players who do not regularly take penalties at their clubs are encouraged to have a “routine” and not to divert from it, even in practice, and some like to have the ball in a particular position so they can strike the same part of it each time.
Kalvin Phillips believes the meticulous practice will be worthwhile, as he is convinced England will have to win a penalty shoot-out at some stage to go all of the way. “In one of the first meetings, the manager showed us his penalty miss and talked about penalty shoot-outs and stuff like that,” the midfielder said.
“He has a laugh about it now and he talks about it all of the time. It’s nice to get the experience from your coach and to get to the final we’re going to eventually have to go through a penalty shoot-out, as every other team have.”
While he prepares for the Germany game, Rice revealed that he has shut down his Twitter account since the first group match against Croatia, so he can fully focus and avoid the wide range of opinions about England on social media.
“I’ve not read anything,” he said. “I’ve kind of taken myself off social media since I’ve been here. I’ve just deleted Twitter. I did it after the Croatia game. “Nothing bad was behind it, it’s just me being me. I like Twitter, but I thought that during this tournament it was best to come off it and focus fully on myself.
“There are only so many times you can read things about your ability that get stuck in your mind, so I had to come off it. I’ll be back on it soon, I’m sure. But I’ve just come off it so I can focus on the tournament, focus on ourselves and, of course, the team. I want to be positive.”