Eurosport - Thu, 10 Sep 09:50:00 2009
England booked their place at next summer's World Cup with an impressive 5-1 win over Croatia at Wembley.
A brace each from Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard maintained England's 100 per cent record in Group 6, while at the same time booking them a place in South Africa with two games to spare.
Eduardo scored a late consolation for Croatia before Wayne Rooney added England's fifth, after Croatia keeper Vedran Runje sliced a clearance into his path, leaving Slaven Bilic's side to now battle for second spot with Ukraine.
The goalless draw played out in Minsk between Belarus and Ukraine prior to kick-off meant that a point was all England needed to secure their passage to South Africa next summer, but no team under Fabio Capello would ever be allowed to lapse into such a mentality.
And so it proved, with England settling immediately and taking the lead just seven minutes into proceedings.
One penalty claim had already been turned down in a busy opening when Aaron Lennon's fall under Josip Simunic's clumsy challenge left referee Undiano Mallenco in no doubt as to the credibility of a second round of appeals. The winger's run in off the right was a signal of things to come from him, and Lampard slammed the ball past Runje and into the bottom-left corner.
From there, England went from strength to strength, and Gareth Barry forced a good save from Runje shortly after with a drilled shot through a forest of bodies. Mario Mandzukic then served brief warning with a flashed shot over when free inside England's area, but it was the only effort Bilic's side manufactured in the opening half, with forward men Eduardo and Ivica Olic marginalised.
Shortly after, England gained the cushion they craved when Gerrard nodded home a simple header. Lennon was again the architect as he dinked a cross from the right to the far post, where the arriving Liverpool midfielder applied the finishing touch.
Two goals up inside 20 minutes and England did not let up. Lampard tried his luck from 35 yards with a free-kick which Runje saw all the way, while Lennon was denied his first international goal when slipped in one-on-one by Rooney as Croatia's keeper remained defiant.
Emile Heskey was selected ahead of Jermain Defoe to partner Rooney up front, and the Spurs striker will have been left wondering what could have been as his international team-mate spurned two chances as half-time approached. Superb passes from Lennon and then Lampard set the Aston Villa man on course with Runje, but the keeper twice foiled his opponent.
The creativity and presence that had been lacking from Croatia in the first half was righted to an extent with a more active approach at the start of the second half, with Mladen Petric a notable half-time introduction.
Glen Johnson appeared fortunate to not concede a penalty when getting a good purchase on Eduardo as both rose to meet a far-post cross in England's area, but that was quickly forgotten as England scored a third.
Left sweating moments earlier as Mallenco took a long look at his challenge on Eduardo, Johnson was then celebrating an assist as he provided Lampard with his second of the evening. An intelligent dinked cut-back from the by-line allowed the Chelsea man to head across the face of goal and into the bottom-left corner.
Seven more minutes passed before further misery was heaped on Croatia, as Gerrard headed his second of the evening. A lofted ball from the by-line from Rooney was looped in by the Liverpool man, adding an emphatic touch to the scoreline.
Rob Green would have been eyeing a clean sheet but on 73 minutes Eduardo swept the ball into the roof of the net after being denied by the West Ham keeper, and Runje negated what had been a reasonably impressive display with a howler to gift Rooney when skewing a clearance to the striker's feet as the Manchester United man made it five, thus sealing an unforgiving evening's work from England.
Belarus 0-0 Ukraine
Ukraine lost valuable points in their qualifying campaign when they were held to a 0-0 draw by former Soviet neighbours Belarus.
A scoreless draw also ended any hopes of Belarus qualifying for their first major finals.
The home team, boosted by the return from injury of captain Alexander Hleb and leading striker Vitali Kutuzov from suspension, were denied on several occasions by Ukraine keeper Andriy Pyatov.
At the other end, the visitors rarely threatened the Belarus goal, with Ukraine captain Andriy Shevchenko having a quiet game before being substituted with two minutes remaining.
Ukraine, with 15 points from eight matches, are third in qualifying Group 6, behind Croatia.
Comment 194 - 213 of 213
95% of all people are no oil paintings to be fair, scottish fellas are well aware of it, they have to resort to wearing skirts to look a bit prettier lol, thats last resort stuff that when nothing else is workin....... its no wonder scottish women fantasize about english guys all the time, theres barely even half a man in scotland is there
England played with a lot of conviction but i found the shots of the crowd very disconcerting, the english certainly are an ugly bunch of @#$%
@#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$% @#$%
Fair play to you Mich, you made a very small contribution to my day going quickly....
Well it does beat working!!!Im not an angry individual i just think your 1st message came across as gloating.
Michelin, I have made no comment about how good or not good we are at all, I think your immagination is getting twisted up in your mind. I would not expect an angry response, our record of 4 WC's speaks for itself so I have no need to bang on about how good I think we are...my post was about your English media to which my English friends agree with me too but obviously you do not have the brain power to acknowledge this. I am glad though that I can at least entertain you with the email tennis...
Haha so your a joker as well then.at the end of the day you can bang on about how mature you are but you came on our pages gloating that Italy are better blah blah so what do you expect if i did on the Italian team pages id expect an angry response thats why i dont do it.
Point proved I see yet again in your reply, no football comment what so ever. Well good luck with your media and lets hope for your sake England perform well enough and you don't all jump on our Italian manager and blame him. Like I said for once England are actually looking like a team. By the way I don't need to go on Italian pages only and I am not trying to impress anybody, but with all your replies leading from my original post all you are doing is making yourself look small and very childish by insulting me. I give into nobody as I am only sharing an opinion or view not trying to be a racist bigot.
Die hard italian Fan if you are such a saint why do you come onto english message boards and insult our team very mature of you stick to the italian pages from now on you can show off all your language skills there im sure they will b impressed!!!
davejones19771000, on Thu 10 Sep 3:19AM You dad and sorry man.......Was just reading through the comments and you really stand out as a compleat and utter plank.....Ejoy your life sad-act :¬)
Michelin, clearly a nerve has been hit and you divulge from what comments I have said. I speak 5 languages but unlike you I am not ignorant and I am not quite sure how you conclude I am arrogant either but the comments originally made were on football and not my nationality and personality....maybe Xenophobia is the word you should look unlike and remove that chip of your shoulder along with the attitude....this is an opinion forum on football not a bully web site..grow up and behave...
Die Hard Italian fan you were making sly petty digs all the way through and no your not superior i can speak German and Spanish i just didnt feel the need to learn Italian as your not important enough and i dont like the people i find them arrogant like you.i manage a semi pro team so my knowledge cant be that bad.
Take care matchfixer take a dive
Michelin, clearly you are mad that me as an Italian am far more superior to you because I can speak English very well too and understand it better. I think you need to go back to school and learn to read or just visit Spec savers as they have a 2 for 1 offer at the moment. At no point am I slaughtering England but merely criticising your media people not the England team, pity you can't make a comment or answering what I actually wrote and meant instead of what you thought I meant and wrote.
When you have something sensible to say I may comment on your remarks or share an opinion with you. As for your knowledge of our football clearly you are in the dark ages still and have no idea what your talking about, remember we are still World Champions until next year, have a nice day son.
pmciver what are you so bitter and mad about did you get abused as a kid?
Die hard italian before you go slaughtering England at least we are a nation of sweaty corrupt cheats like your match fixing league. All italy is known for is boring defensive football and cheating great one mate.CLOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry bunnywabbit, I think that is the nice Germans being kind to England. It was goal line computer generated images shown and discussed on Match of the Day that proved the ball didn't cross the line. Can you argue with England legend GAry Walkers Crisps
the best performance by England I have seen in a long time well done boys. Special credit to Fabio, the whole national is relieved you've done a greater job than Steve, booked us on way to S. Africa and hushed critics that thought you were not right for the job
im a proud Englishman, but i just want to say we have not won the world cup, its not coming home just yet, we still have a long way to go and a lot of hard work to complete. we are, on a good day capable of beating the best in the world but as we have seen in the past , we dont always have good days, the group stage of the world cup is more or less a given once we get to S.A, but if we have one off day after that , we are on our way back home.
last night was one of the best England performances i have seen in a long time, the quality of the passing, the way we moved the ball around the field was fantastic, we played with flair, style and something i have not seen for ages....Passion. lennon and Johnson were outstanding , Matty upson was inspiring and a replacement for rio. capello has these lads working, for each other and for the nation. last night the pride came back to English football.......
the ghost of the McLaren era is laid to rest once and for all........
pmcdiver, sorry you are wrong, German tv with the use of computer software proved the ball did cross the line, that was a few years ago. You need to get into the computer age. It has now been proved to have crossed the line using several different softwares. When asked by the German tv channel, the people said even though the ball crossed the line, they still prefer to beieve that it didn't
It's one thing qualifying for WC, it's another thing to have won last night's game, but better then that was watching England play a football match that you wanted to watch and see more of. It's the way they played that was so great
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