Italy emerged winner of the 2020 European championship after they inflicted more penalty heartache on England to win 3-2 in a shoot-out, with Bukayo Saka missing the decisive kick to deny the hosts, after the game at Wembley had ended in a draining 1-1 draw through extra time.
Saka’s kick was repelled by Gianluigi Donnarumma, to give Italy the Henri Delaunay trophy for the second time at the end of a shoot-out in which England scored their first two penalties, but then saw Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho also fail.
Jorginho could have won it for Italy only for his penalty to be saved by Jordan Pickford, giving renewed hope to the England support who had earlier created a febrile atmosphere with their team looking set to run away with this final.
The nerve-shredding climax seemed unlikely, given the way the match began, with Luke Shaw scoring for Gareth Southgate’s England after just one minute and 57 seconds, the fastest goal ever in a European Championship final, stunning a team who arrived here on a record 33-match unbeaten run.
Italy were shell-shocked and struggled to recover in a stadium where the official attendance was 67,173 but more England fans clearly managed to enter after disgraceful scenes when supporters without tickets stormed the gates.
Serious questions will be asked about security, as the game was also briefly held up by a pitch invader late on, but English fans were obviously desperate to see their team finally win a major tournament for the first time since the 1966 World Cup.
Italy, though, had most of the possession after falling behind and ultimately deserved their equaliser when it came midway through the second half through Leonardo Bonucci.
With no further scoring, this was the first European Championship final to be decided on penalties since 1976.
It is more penalty agony for England, whose list of previous shoot-out exits included losing to Italy at Euro 2012, as well as in the Euro 96 semi-finals against Germany, when Southgate missed the crucial kick.
While their 55-year wait to win another major international title goes on, Italy’s own particular half-century of hurt is over.
The Azzurri have won four World Cups, but their sole European Championship triumph before this dated back to 1968.
They had lost two European Championship finals in little over two decades, with the agony of losing to France via a golden goal in Rotterdam in 2000 and then being torn apart by Spain in 2012, going down 4-0 in Kiev.
