England Beat Platinum Stars 3-0.
England team had on the whole a good day out against a local opposition, called the Platinum stars, and although it was a convincing win in the end however the old habits of the team just don’t seem to be going away. The same old pattern of the England team was on display, a lacklustre first half which saw England stars not able to stamp their authority on the local players, and one could not make the distinction between the international names of England and the unknown South African players. Hence once again it needed the half time break for the Englishmen to gather themselves and put on a show in the 2nd half. Now considering they were playing against a local club a performance like this should not be acceptable as the World Cup is almost upon us now.
The introduction of Wayne Rooney certainly looked to have changed the outlook of the team. After the break the striker came on and spurred the team on to play more attacking football, Jermaine Defoe scored the early goal, and in the 2nd half Rooney made one for Joe Cole, and later smashed one on himself at the tail end of the match. Which underlined the statement Capello had made when Rooney Got injured during the Champions League semi final tie against Bayern Munich, Capello said “NO ROONEY, NO WORLD CUP”, and that seems to be the case here, as the team looked toothless in attack and lack of creativity was evident throughout the first half.
However the fact that the team relies so much on one man is not a great sign, as it was proved when his club Manchester United who were well on course to win Champions League and the domestic league fell away miserably at the end of the season due to an injury to Wayne Rooney, and same can be the case with England team should he suffer an injury in the build up or during the World Cup.
The 3rd choice goal keeper Joe Hart made his way into the starting 11, ahead of the first choice 4 in defence, which may suggest that he no longer is Number 3 and may have nudged ahead of Robert Green as England’s Number 2.
Aston Villa striker Emile Heskey put on a good show alongside Wayne Rooney in the 2nd half, doing no harm to his chances of cementing a place in the first 11, while the duo from Spurs of Crouch and Defoe were less then impressive in the first half of the match.
The match started well enough, with just a few minutes gone Shaun Wright-Phillips, who was in the right back position at the time slid one through to the new Captain Gerrard, who made a brilliant run to the by-line before laying it off to Defoe who made no mistake and made it one nil.
What followed was less then impressive, England team looked to have taken it a bit too easy after scoring the early goal, and there was no enthusiasm in the team. While the Platinum Stars had a number of opportunities to get level in the first half, but Joe Hart somewhat vindicated Capello’s decision by keeping the home side out.
Yet the 2nd half was a whole different story after the inspirational Rooney made his way to the middle. Now on the evidence of this last match before England play their first match of the World Cup against United States, Capello will need to take a along hard look at his team, and decide which are his best 11 players, as clearly the team does not know how to sustain the same level of aggression throughout the 90 minutes, patches of good performances may not be good enough even against United States.
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