Andrea Pirlo sealed one of the finest individual displays of Euro 2012 with the coolest of penalties to help Italy into a semi-final place against Germany.
The 34-year-old had controlled the game for two hours against the labouring Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker but kept his finest touch till the end when the pressure was at it’s highest.
UEFA stats disclosed that the Juventus midfielder made 131 passes throughout 120 minutes of play.
After watching England go ahead in the penalty shoot out thanks to a miss from Riccardo Montolivo it was Pirlo’s turn to step up.
With Joe Hart preening himself on the goal-line Pirlo casually stepped forward and dinked in the cheekiest of penalties as if it was a training session.
Ashley Young followed that up by smashing his penalty against the crossbar with Italy sealing the shoot-out 4-2 to send England packing.
After the victory Italian coach Cesare Prandelli said: “When Andrea Pirlo stepped up I was very calm – he’s a star and knew what he needed to do; and he did it.
“Penalties are a lottery but I thought we deserved victory in the end. When (Riccardo) Montolivo missed his penalty I was sad as he was one of the best players tonight.
“I wasn’t surprised by tonight. I knew we could control the game. My worry was that we were allowing England too much space on the break – we could have been a bit cleverer in our build-up play.
“We tried to play football. We tried to draw England out; we tried to hit them quickly. I think if we’d scored in the 90 minutes it would have been an even better game.
Click on the image below and tell Samsung what matters most in twitter style (140 characters) to win some great prizes.
CLICK HERE for McCoist hits out at players honesty
Follow Video Celts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
Best team won it was like watching the Huns in europe. Pirlo was immense every pass to a man Lenny should get the players to watch that performance on the 1st day at training and tell them that’s how to play football. Hail hail
Legend!
Pirlo’s performance certainly showed up the so called expert analysis of Alan Hansen who assured viewers that at 33 years old, Pirlo would tire badly in the 2nd half. Instead we witnessed him continue to control the entire game including 30 mins extra time…then slot the coolest of penalties. Meanwhile his opponents Gerrard (Went down with cramp) & Parker had to be substitued….Just goes to show…there is no real subsititue for pure class.
Just like their Scottish equivalent (dead ranger’s) England were abismal and an embarrassment to football the world over. What are these kind of teams doing for the once beautiful game? They are destroying it in order to get a result nothing more nothing less. They deserve nothing and got nothing. Justice was served.
This was a very satisying victory for the Italians, and me too!!
The english tried to take a leaf out of chelsea’s book by killing the game, taking all forms of entertainment out of it, reminding us of a team which used to play in Scotland, rangers, when they were also in europe. What the great Lionel Messi once called, “anti-football” has become a definate cancer in the game, and adopated by that old team, rangers, Chelsea, and now the english national team. Shameful. They all deserve each other in their oblivion!Forza Italia!