Will Saka and Rice’s England Euro journey end in silverware?
Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice’s England reached the final of the Euros after a late strike from Ollie Watkins delivered a 2-1 hammer blow to The Netherlands in the semi-final.
At the start of the encounter the Arsenal duo could only hope for a draw after The Netherlands Xavi Simons slotted in a cracking opener inside the opening seven minutes, but before long (11 minutes later) Harry Kane slid away the equaliser from the spot.
After Phil Foden had a chance cleared off the line and another striking the woodwork, with just over ten minutes to go, Saka seemed to rise to the occasion again, like he had done in the quarter-finals versus Switzerland. However this was not to be the case with his effort being narrowly ruled offside with all England fans tears flying onto the screens of their TV’s in hope of a winner.
After Watkins scored from inside the right hand side of the Dutch’s box in the dying minutes from an acute angle, it meant The Three Lions had reached back to back Euro finals for the first time in history, with Rice and Saka playing instrumental leadership roles on the field to ensure this feat was achieved.
According to The Economist going into the Euros Opta’s “supercomputer” calculated the Gunners and England had a 20% chance of winning the tournament. After last night’s fairytale victory in Dortmund, going into the final versus Spain England must surely be even greater favourites but not quite…
The machines at most bookies have put Spain high up on the betting pedestal as predicted 11/8 winners of the competition, with England at 21/10 for being Euro 2024 heroes after fulltime. At the bottom of the odds table is for Harry Kane and Alvaro Morata to score and Dani Carvajal and Declan Rice both to receive a card in 90 minutes as being 125/1 (in other words a 0.8% probability of actually happening). Not much further up in the grander schemes or probability (16/1) is for either team to grab a penalty in the final despite England being handed a jammy one the other night after minimal contact was made in the box between Kane and Denzel Dumfries.
However we will only really find out whether the odds of our Gunners clinching their first International trophy and England’s first in almost 60 years, since the 1966 World Cup, turn out true tonight!
Liam Harding
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Hopefully they got the tactical nous trust their ability to decode games