England got revenge by beating Switzerland after a dramatic penalty

Three years ago, Bukayo Saka scored his first penalty as a senior player, in the European Championship final. He missed, contributing to England's defeat.

This night was different.

“Coming back from something like that is tough, but I used it to get stronger,” he told the BBC after the match.

Union captain Gareth Southgate England have a very bad history with penalty shootouts in the European Championships, a miss in the semi-final against Germany in 1996 led to the team being eliminated from that tournament, and in the last European Championship they lost the final to Italy on penalties. Bukayo Saka was one of the scapegoats.

England, of course, had prepared well. “We want to have as much control over this process as possible,” the FA chief himself put it a few days ago when speaking about possible sanctions at the tournament.

Against Switzerland, plans had to be put into action, and their players were very sharp.

Immediately it was a feature. England. Cole Palmer scored the first penalty, Jordan Pickford saved Manuel Akanji's shot. Then he calmly deceived Jude Bellingham the next time. Fabian Schar was equally confident for Switzerland.

Then it was Bukayo Saka’s turn. Since missing a penalty at Wembley three years ago, he had become Arsenal’s reliable penalty taker. Now he rolled the ball into the post and smiled.

The rest of the penalty shootouts also went in and this time England advanced on penalties.

Since the beginning of the match Otherwise, it was England, not Switzerland, who controlled most of the tempo in the first half of the quarter-final in Dusseldorf. That meant it was slow.

Across the EU, England have had a negative approach to most things, on the pitch, in interviews, national team captain Gareth Southgate has repeated that they are “trying to do something that has never been done before”, which is to win the EC, and he has said that this seems like a very difficult and somewhat boring thing to get involved in.

The quarter-final was his 100th game as England manager, having arrived in 2016 and seemed to have eased much of the tension and pressure surrounding the national team, but at the European Championship everything seemed tense.

sometimes In the first half, Switzerland started their attacking game with more movement and imagination, but England disarmed them.

England dominated possession, worked methodically, played better than they had previously in the tournament, Bukayo Saka pushed to the limit, but there was nothing hot.

The score was 0-0 at half-time, and the draw was a huge blow.

In the second half Switzerland started to take over more and more.

After his successful season with Bayer Leverkusen, Granit Xhaka has been the focal point of Switzerland's play at the European Championship, and while England have been criticised, Switzerland have surprised positively in the tournament.

With a quarter of an hour remaining, the advantage paid off. Breel Embolo crossed – 1-0 to Switzerland.

England had also come from behind in the previous match, and their response was immediate now. To his right, Bukayo Saka stepped up and equalised.

after five minutes Switzerland's first goal made it 1-1, and the match went back to square one again.

It was the third of three quarter-finals to be decided after regular time, and extra time was starting to look like the norm in this tournament.

Substitute Xherdan Shaqiri hit the bar with a corner in the second quarter of extra time, but the shootout was expected. England executed it to perfection.