It was probably a good thing that the penalty shootout ended every five shooters. Because England coach Gareth Southgate would not have been able to maintain the internal logic that had apparently occurred to him for this competition. The dramaturgy followed a highly innovative script: Southgate’s lead actors grew younger with each take. First Marcus Rashford, 23, then Jadon Sancho, 21, finally Bukayo Saka, 19; next should have been Jude Bellingham, who just turned 18. However, Southgate had forgotten to replace him.

It was easy to lose track in the last minutes of this tournament. Backup player Jordan Henderson was suddenly replaced. Substitute player Jack Grealish limped a bit and then stayed. Player Kyle Walker, a veteran, was substituted just before the routine was called. Then came Rashford and Sancho. They came to shoot.

For neutral viewers, it’s definitely good when a game ends up being wild and adventurous. It is not pleasant when a non-neutral coach deliberately pushes his people into such a battle image. Gareth Southgate, who missed a crucial penalty himself in 1996, should have known better.

This EM was a coaches tournament. In the end, two teams arrived that were closely and consistently accompanied by their coaches Roberto Mancini and Gareth Southgate for a longer period of time and, for seven tournament matches, they gave the impression that they couldn’t imagine anything better than playing all of them. football together. Seven games minus one penalty shoot-out, as it should be said now. The height of the fall is the tragedy of this finale: Ironically, Southgate, who was so sovereign until now, sabotaged his country’s 55-year dream, simply because he briefly left the group. Because he, presumably with the best of intentions, made decisions that contradict the psychological laws of nature in this sport.

Coaches must understand the deep psychology of their sport to be successful

The last minutes of this final deserve to be shown in the future in all coaching courses in the world, because an underestimated sub-discipline of coaching is being negotiated. This discipline is not about whether a coach changes the system seven times a game, it is not about training control or eliciting motivational speeches. It is about understanding the game, not from an academic perspective, but with all the senses. Each game has its own colors and smells, contains secret symbols, and follows invisible switches – if you take a wrong turn, you won’t come back.

Coach Southgate has sinned against the psychology of the game, just for a few moments, but when it’s the crucial moments, the game shows no mercy. Substituting players only for the penalty shootout is generally not a good idea, because it puts pressure on players without rhythm, but doing so with young players, for whom so far only one has been used in the tournament, is a serious case. lack of attendance. And all of that at Wembley, in the eyes of the world and with knowledge of the historical dimension of sport: this story was simply too big.

It is an understanding of this EM that coaches must understand the deep psychology of their sport to be successful. Jogi Löw also repeatedly revealed perception difficulties of this kind, most recently when he replaced Kai Havertz for Hungary immediately after his goal and Jamal Musiala came in too late against England. Also the orders of Danish coach Kasper Hjulmand in the semi-finals against England were directed against the sense of the game; With the replacement of forwards Mikkel Damsgaard and Kasper Dolberg, he broke the waves that his team could have carried unnecessarily.

Now it will be exciting to see if something broke between Southgate and his team or if they lost theirs. Finale at home Similar to Bayern Munich’s defeat on penalties in 2012. The following year, Bayern won the Champions League: the challenge is also part of the psychology of the game.