Gareth Southgate takes responsibility for England’s penalty failure and tells Bukayo Saka his decisive miss ‘totally rests with me’

Gareth Southgate took responsibility for England’s penalty failure against Italy and told Bukayo Saka that his decisive miss in the shootout “totally rests with me”.

Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho all missed from the spot as England suffered a dramatic defeat in the Euro 2020 Final at Wembley.

Southgate himself suffered penalty heartbreak against Germany at Euro ’96 and said the decision to select 19-year-old Saka for a penalty was “my call and totally rests with me”.

Asked if he had a message for Saka, Southgate told the BBC: “That it is down to me.

“I decided on the penalty takers based on what we had done in training and nobody is on their own.

“We have won together as a team and it is absolutely on all of us in terms of not being able to win the game tonight.

“In terms of the penalties, that is my call and totally rests with me.”

Asked how confident he was when the match went to penalties after a 1-1 draw after extra-time, Southgate said: “We were well prepared and started well.

“Unfortunately the guys were not able to convert tonight. They cannot look at themselves in terms of how they practiced because they could not have done any more or any better.

“They cannot have any recriminations, they have been an absolute joy to work with. They have gone further than we have gone for so long but of course it is incredibly painful.”

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