Rio Ferdinand has come to the defence of England manager Gareth Southgate's penalty shootout order and compared it to the decisions made by Sir Alex Ferguson's during the 2008 Uefa Champions League final.
England reached the European Championship final for the first time ever, but were beaten by Italy 3-2 on penalties after a 1-1 draw during normal time. Young attackers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed their attempts, receiving a torrent of racial abuse online afterwards.
Southgate came under fire for putting young players in that position in the first place while senior players such as Jack Grealish, Raheem Sterling, John Stones and Luke Shaw were all still available to take one.
But Ferdinand, who played in the Champions League final shootout in 2008 for Manchester United against Chelsea, likened it to what legendary manager Ferguson did back then by having two young players take important spot kicks in the decider.
Speaking on his YouTube show 'Vibe with Five', the former England captain said; "I've not been in a European Championship penalty shootout final, but I've been in a Champions League final and I've felt that feeling of nervousness, the enormity of what it is to be taking a penalty then.
"I was looking at the Man United penalty takers on that night in Moscow and our fifth penalty was Nani. He was [21-years-old] at the time, our sixth penalty taker was Anderson who was 19 or 20 at the time as well. Who was after Anderson? Ryan Giggs.
"Sir Alex Ferguson was never pulled up for putting Giggs behind two young players, two babies in terms of experience, two players that he brought on to take penalties. Alright, they might have come on a little bit earlier but they were at the same time brought on to take penalties. So, it's alright when you win. It's when you lose that you get the criticism.
"I understand that, that's the game we're in but we can't all just blame Gareth Southgate and say that 'ah because you've got experience that means you go first'. One, you need the experienced player to want to take the penalty. Grealish has said he wanted to take one, but we don't know if Henderson, Walker, Sterling or whoever said I don't want to take it.
"I know for a fact they would have been doing penalties every day after training and the manager would have gone with whoever he saw best fit technique-wise and execution-wise in that environment. We all know the environment of doing it in a final in front of the world is very different in terms of pressure."
