England leaves it late in Euro semifinal<\/a><\/p>\nEngland equalises late in stoppage time, then nets off a saved penalty deep into extra time to beat Italy 2-1 and return to the final of the Women’s European Championships.<\/p>\n
The victory set up a decider against reigning champions England in Basel on Monday morning AEST.<\/p>\n
It will be a re-match of the 2023 World Cup final in Sydney, which Spain won 1-0.<\/p>\n
Twice-reigning Ballon d’Or winner Bonmat\u00ed finally broke the deadlock in the 113th minute.<\/p>\n
She picked up a ball in the left channel and spotted a gap left by Germany keeper Ann-Katrin Berger at the near post, before whipping a shot from a tight angle into the net.<\/p>\n
Spain captain Irene Paredes struck the foot of a post with a first-half header as her side dominated possession, with the Germans building a solid block and inviting the Spaniards to attack while they attempted to strike on the counter.<\/p>\n
Germany winger Klara Buehl was impressive throughout the match, getting in behind the Spanish defence in the 63rd minute but shooting straight at goalkeeper Cata Coll.<\/p>\n
With the Germans defending superbly, Spain struggled to break them down.<\/p>\n
The World Cup champions were almost caught out in stoppage time when Buehl had a deflected effort that Coll had to claw away, but the match ended scoreless, forcing extra time.<\/p>\n
Germany, who came into the match with a record of nine wins in 10 previous Euro semifinals, looked set to drag the match to penalties, but Bonmat\u00ed had other ideas.<\/p>\n
“I feel proud. We deserve it,” Bonmat\u00ed said after the match.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had a brutal championship. But we’ve also had a great tournament so far until today.”<\/p>\n
Berger, who was the hero of Germany’s quarterfinal shootout win over France, took responsibility for the goal that saw her side crash out of the tournament.<\/p>\n
“I take the blame for that as well. The near post had to be covered, that’s clear, and that’s why I’m even more disappointed in myself,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I can make as many saves as I want, but that goal should have simply been mine, and that’s why I feel incredibly sorry, not even for myself, but for the team, because they really gave everything.”<\/p>\n
England also needed extra time to snatch a 2-1 win over Italy in their semifinal on Wednesday AEST.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain’s Aitana Bonmat\u00ed has struck a superb extra-time winner to fire her side to a 1-0 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[18327,64,63,1208,18326,2649,5717,2328,9738,2020,85],"class_list":["post-17137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aitana-bonmati","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-england","tag-european-championship","tag-final","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-semifinals","tag-spain","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}