England have their foot in the door
England have their foot in the door
As the saying goes, “You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.” Well, England are one win away from their ticket to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and it would be a disaster of monumental proportions to blow it now.
They almost guaranteed next summer’s trip with a 6-0 whitewashing over Andorra today (June 10th) at Wembley Stadium in London in their group six qualifier. And once again Wayne Rooney led the way by banging in two more goals. He now has 24 in 52 England matches, 10 in his last seven games for England and eight in seven World Cup qualifying matches. It looked like he could have had a hat trick in the first few minutes if the ball had bounced his way.
Manager Fabio Capello made a few changes from the squad that started last Saturday as David Beckham made played a full 90 minutes and Peter Crouch started up front for a change.
England did something unusual for them as they got off to a good start finally and the Manchester United star opened the scoring in the fourth minute with a fine downward header after being left alone just yards in front of the goal and being picked out by Glen Johnson.
Frank Lampard made it 2-0 in the 29th minute. Johnson then laid in a lovely cross for Rooney in the 39th minute and he met it beautifully and guided it into the net for a 3-0 lead. Johnson set up three goals and was the man of the match.
Capello brought on Ashley Young, and Jermain Defoe at half time for Steven Gerrard and Rooney. While Young didn’t make much of a difference, Defoe showed why he’s a lot better option up front than Heskey.
Wayne Bridge came on for Ashley Cole in the 64th minute and England put the ball in the net a minute later but it was ruled offside. Defoe was denied by an excellent save from Andorra’s keeper Alvarez in the 69th minute as the England striker met a cross just a couple of yards in front of the net.
However, Defoe made sure he got on the score sheet just five minutes later and then he doubled his output in the 76th minute as Alvarez couldn’t hang onto David Beckham‘s long-range free kick and Defoe pounced on the rebound and tucked it home. But Defoe wasn’t finished there. He made a great run into the box in the 80th minute, but mistimed his shot, however, it fell right into the path of Crouch and he just tucked it over the line to make it 6-0. It was Crouch’s 14th goal in 17 starts for his country.
Today was England’s biggest win in a competitive game since 1999 and although they have done very well so far in the Qualifying stages, some factions of the English press are getting a little carried away already by suggesting 2010 is finally going to be the year England breaks their 44-year drought and will be crowned world champions, for the first time since 1966.
While England has just as good of a chance as anybody to win it, perhaps even a better shot actually than some teams, let’s not forget the games are won on the pitch, not on, and in the paper. They still have a lot of bad habits and sloppy play that needs to be eradicated before next summer. Assuming they make it.
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