To home or Rome?

LONDON, England (AP):

To hear the England players giddily singing along with the Wembley Stadium crowd to “Sweet Caroline” – “so good, so good” – encapsulates the youthful exuberance and carefree spirit of a group unburdened by trying to end the team’s 55-year trophy drought today at 2 p.m.

To hear Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini talk about going all the way shows how pressure to win a trophy for your country can be an enduring motivation for yourself and the squad, especially in the twilight of a career.

“Maybe at 36 you feel it more,” Chiellini said, “because you understand more how hard it is and the work that goes into it.”

The European Championship final on Sunday pits England, who haven’t even reached a final since winning the 1966 FIFA World Cup, against one of the continent’s most decorated teams.

International debut

The last of Italy’s four World Cup victories came in 2006, when Chiellini had already made his international debut but didn’t play at the tournament. But the team is a comparative underachiever in the European Championship with its only title in 1968.

Italy, however, has already reached the final twice in recent years – in 2000 and 2012 – whereas England haven’t got close until now.

With the pandemic restricting travel to London, the permitted crowd of 66,000 at Wembley Stadium will be largely packed with England fans for the national team’s greatest football moment since 1966, when coach Gareth Southgate wasn’t even born.

Winning Euro 2020 would be a form or redemption for Southgate, whose penalty miss against Germany at Euro ‘96 denied England a chance of making the final.

“I know it won’t be enough for me and for the rest of the staff and for the players if we don’t win it now,” Southgate said. “You get lovely messages that say ‘whatever happens now,’ but that won’t be how it will be on Monday. We’ve got to get it right.

“We can win it, but we’ve got to get it spot on to win it. I said to the players ... people are respecting how they’ve been and that they’ve represented the country in the right way but now they have a choice of what colour medal.”

Italy didn’t even qualify for the 2018 World Cup but have excelled with a 33-match unbeaten run since then under coach Roberto Mancini.

“At the beginning, when he told us to have in our minds the idea of winning the Euro, we thought he was crazy,” Chiellini said. “Instead, during these years he has created a team which is now on the brink of doing that. And as he has repeated to us after every match, ‘One centimetre at a time,’ and now there is only the last centimetre left.”

The final takes football to the end of an unprecedented period of pandemic disruption since the European Championship began 60 years, completing a unique tournament staged across the continent like never before, after being delayed by a year.

To home or Rome? We’ll know this afternoon.