Heartbreak

Croatia, 2, England, England, 1. Heartbreak.

Croatia, two, England won.

It pains me to say, we were just saying this outside, but Croatia were definitely the better team from the second half onwards.

It's a bit disappointing, and in a way, I suppose it's a kind of, another kind of inkling towards that idea that we've discussed previously that England

maybe go one ahead and then don't look quite as confident.

So that's something that I'm sure Gareth Southgate and the boys who've done so well

can work on before the Euros in two years' time.

I'm hesitant to be too disappointed because before

the tournament, if I'd known that we were going to reach the semi-finals, I would have thought

that would be a fantastic achievement. It hurts a little bit to go out to Croatia because I

thought on paper we were the best team, but as we've said, I think Croatia probably

deserved it overall. Do you think that's a fair statement,

Alex? Yeah, they certainly created more and better chances. I think England maybe struggled to

break them down as successfully as they have other sides the set pieces didn't come

through tripeze direct free kick aside Croatia shored up the midfields they brought

brazovic in which i think was an absolute necessity if they've not done that i could have seen

england running away with that you could argue also that's what that's sort of where they want it because there were numerous. I mean, what was interesting about this game? There's not been not been too many so far. And I suppose generally speaking, this is the sort of game you might tend to see towards the last stages of a tournament like this when the better teams are left in it. But both teams wanted to hold onto the ball. And at times,

what that led to was a sort of scrappy, almost, not quite, but almost end-to-end affair.

And I think on balance, Croatia's midfields managed that better than England's did. Yeah, they also,

I think, were able to hold the ball up in wide spaces particularly well. Rebich for all his abrasiveness

and fouling otherwise had a very good game. Perisich also Manzukic drifting across and targeting

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