Another Narrow Victory For England

Wayne Rooney

Roy Hodgson´s Eng­land side are through to the last eight after defeat­ing Ukraine 1–0 at the Don­bass Area Sta­dium in Don­etsk on Tues­day night. With less than five minutes of the second period gone, Wayne Rooney headed home from close range to give The Three Lions a well deserved vic­tory which took them to the top of Group D.

Ukraine entered this fix­ture on the back of an embar­rass­ing 2–0 defeat against France last Fri­day whilst Eng­land were on a high after beat­ing Erik Hamren´s Sweden team 3–2. As expec­ted, Eng­land star­ted the match on a bright note but struggled to find the back of the net dur­ing the open­ing skir­mishes of the encounter. Wayne Rooney, who appeared in his first match of the 2012 European Cham­pi­on­ships fol­low­ing a two-game ban, should have net­ted after 28 minutes when the prod­igal son met a fine cross from his fel­low Manchester United team mate Ash­ley Young but he could only head wide of the post. The Ukrain­i­ans dom­in­ated the pos­ses­sion of the ball for large parts of the first period but The Three Lions came back a lot stronger after the resump­tion. And a few minutes into the second half, a cross from Steven Ger­rard even­tu­ally found Wayne Rooney who headed the ball into the back of the net from just a yard out. Whatever his fail­ures in the 2010 South Africa World Cup, here was adequate proof of his abil­ity to be at the exact right place at the exact right time. There was drama to fol­low on 62 minutes, though, as Oleh Blokhin´s plucky team looked to have the ball in the net but the offi­cials failed to spot it and play was allowed to carry on. The con­tro­versy that accom­pan­ied the decision, how­ever, did not over­shadow an Eng­land per­form­ance which was both con­vin­cing and effect­ive. The flow of the energy con­sum­ing clash con­tin­ued to bounce back and forth with the two sides hav­ing plenty of oppor­tun­it­ies to score, but at the end of the day the home team were simply run­ning out of gas. After beat­ing co-hosts Ukraine 1–0 yes­ter­day, Eng­land now face Cesare Prandelli´s Italy team at the Olympic Sta­dium in Kiev in the European Cham­pi­on­ships Quarter Finals this Sunday. Eng­land: Joe Hart, Glen John­son, Ash­ley Cole, John Terry, Joleon Lescott, Steven Ger­rard, Ash­ley Young, James Mil­ner, Scott Parker, Danny Wel­beck, Wayne Rooney. Sub­sti­tutes: Theo Wal­cott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Andy Carroll.

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