Arsenal’s Nigerian-born winger, Bukayo Saka starred for 69 minutes and had a foot on a goal for England, as The Three Lions beat Denmark 2-1 to reach the finals of this year’s European Championship, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although Saka, who barely survived a late fitness test in order to start Wednesday’s game at Wembley Stadium in London, had to bow out in the 69th minute and give way to Jack Grealish, the lad with Nigerian parents left to a roar of applause.
The applause would spead ouder and for all the playrs, as England eached their first final in 55 years, have last been in at this stage back in 1966 when they won the FIFA World Cup on home soil, such that great expectations are already ahead of them towards Sunday’s clash with Italy.
Saka will hope to be fit again to start that game at the same venue, even as celebrations continue across Great Britain and the English-speaking world, after England captain Harry Kane fired his side into their first European Championship final.
Kane did so by slamming in the rebound to his saved penalty in extra-time, as Gareth Southgate’s team eclipsed the manager’s icons of 25 years ago with a hard-fought win in ‘The Home Of Football.’.
There were 60,000 fans back inside Wembley for the semi-final and, come kick-off, they were eclipsing the noise created ahead of the Scotland and Germany matches earlier in the tournament.
On the big screen, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were singing along to ‘Three Lions’ and the spirit of Euro 96 had undoubtedly been recaptured.
Southgate has carried the pain of his shoot-out penalty miss at Wembley since Euro 96 but his Three Lions wrote their own history on Wednesday night, setting up a Sunday showdown with Italy back at Wembley.
The gaffer made one change from their win over Ukraine, with fit-again Saka coming in for Jadon Sancho and Southgate sticking with the back four from that game.
It was far from straightforward, with Mikkel Damsgaard breaching England’s previously watertight defence with the first direct free-kick goal of the tournament on 30 minutes after the hosts had made a fast start.
But England forced an equaliser home through a Simon Kjaer own goal and while they could not get the job done in 90 minutes against an increasingly-tired Danish side.
They had flown back from their quarter-final in Baku, the majority of 60,000 fans back at Wembley roared with delight when Kane eventually beat the otherwise brilliant goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel.
For Denmark, it is a valiant end to an incredible story at this tournament, and they deserve huge praise for what they have achieved after the shock of Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest in their first match.
Kane dropped deep, fed Bukayo Saka with a fine pass, and, with Sterling primed to tuck in his fourth of the tournament, Kjaer beat him to it and deflected the ball into his own goal.
