Anthony Gordon scored the only goal of the game to help England U21s produce one of the narrow football scores of the weekend in Euro 2023. In 34 minutes, Anthony Gordon scored to give Lee Carsley’s team a well-earned lead going into halftime. This goal capitalized on the Young Lions’ dominant first-half performance. But everything changed after the break as Portugal absolutely controlled the game, hitting the crossbar and had two penalty requests rejected. However, because of the outstanding play of center-backs Levi Colwill and Taylor Harwood-Bellis in front of goalkeeper James Trafford, who has yet to give up a goal in this tournament, England survived their most difficult test yet and advanced to the last four.
With Wednesday’s game being England’s first return to this level of the Euros since 2017, they now shift their attention to Israel, who they defeated 2-0 in the group stage. England entered this quarterfinal game with a lot of confidence after sweeping all of their group games 2-0, and it was evident in the way they controlled possession throughout the first half. In retrospect, Trafford’s quick save to deny Wolves’ excellent Pedro Neto should have served as a warning, but with Gordon scoring at the other end and Noni Madueke missing the goal, England appeared to be the more likely team to win.
As halftime drew near, they took advantage of that control. Each of their front three contributed to this great goal. Morgan Gibbs-White received a pass from Madueke into the right channel of the penalty box, and Gordon skillfully executed his cut-back for his second goal of the competition. Though the Young Lions captain threw himself in the way of a shot from Portugal captain Tiago Dantas, England required a Harwood-Bellis block on the verge of halftime to maintain that advantage. That would only be the beginning of the defensive strategy of facing the wall.
At the beginning of the second half, Carsley’s team was quickly pushed back, and it was lucky for Trafford that Colwill’s blocked clearance didn’t cause them more trouble before Dantas and substitute Paulo Bernardo came near. Just after the hour mark, Fabio Silva and Colwill both fell in the penalty area due to a cross. However, when the defender made a fantastic save from Henrique Araujo, there were even stronger claims, with Araujo alleging that Harwood-Bellis had tripped him. Once more, both the referee and VAR viewed it in England’s favor.
Second-half substitution Araujo, who spent last season’s loan season at Watford, was in the midst of the action when he agonizingly flicked a header against the crossbar as Portugal pushed England back. The Young Lions ultimately only managed one shot during the whole second period, and that shot didn’t arrive until the 87th minute. After his first free kick was blocked at the 90-minute mark, Neto shot wide, and deep into injury time, Arsenal fullback Nuno Tavares missed wide. England was saved by the full-time horn at last. England’s ambition of competing in the Euros remains intact despite the fact that it wasn’t pretty.
“You’ll have opportunities, and it’s on me to take advantage of them. I regret not having one or two more, as I probably should have. Despite being really exhausted, I’m thrilled about the victory and the team’s perseverance,” match-winner Anthony Gordon said. “Today was a whole different challenge, a totally different game where they had a lot of the ball, and we came through it and dug in as a team. Up to this point in the tournament, we’ve had a lot of excellent performances. We haven’t previously undergone that exam. We haven’t had the chance to demonstrate that aspect of our abilities, but tonight we did, and we most surely did so.”
“The game versus Israel was challenging for us. We will need to play at the top of our game to defeat them since they are such a small, well-organized squad,” manager Lee Carlsley said. “Portugal is unquestionably one of the greatest teams that we have faced, in my opinion. We had to display a variety of skills tonight; in addition to having solid possession, what was most encouraging was the teamwork and the way everyone remained united in the second half.”
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