England Lock Horns With Ukraine

Roy Hodg­son

Fol­low­ing the hard fought and nar­row 3–2 vic­tory against Sweden at the Olympic Sta­dium in Kiev last Fri­day, The Three Lions are now second in Group D. Next up for Roy Hodgson´s revital­ised Eng­land team are co-hosts Ukraine who they pre­pare to meet at the 50,000 capa­city Don­bass Arena Sta­dium in Don­etsk this Tues­day night.

The show­down between Eng­land and Sweden cer­tainly lived up to its billing as one of the most anti­cip­ated and eagerly awaited matches in the group stages of the tour­na­ment. And although Eng­land had never pre­vi­ously man­aged to defeat The Sweden National Foot­ball Team in an inter­na­tional com­pet­i­tion, they were non­ethe­less strong favour­ites to emerge vic­tori­ous from the cru­cial Group D clash. After tak­ing the lead in the first period with a header from Andy Car­roll, the Eng­land defence gif­ted the oppos­i­tion two goals shortly after resump­tion. But in a moment of divine inspir­a­tion and insight, Roy Hodg­son turned the game around by bring­ing on Theo Wal­cott when The Three Lions were on their knees and needed lift­ing. Not will­ing to give in, Eng­land changed gear and their efforts were inev­it­ably rewar­ded when the Emir­ates Sta­dium favour­ite net­ted his side’s second goal after 64 minutes of play. The game was even­tu­ally sealed in the 78th minute when Danny Wel­beck flicked the ball into the back of net from close range to give Eng­land the win. Roy Hodg­son: “Against Ukraine, a player like Wayne Rooney can make a major dif­fer­ence and I am delighted to wel­come him back. If I did leave him out, all hell might break loose in the dress­ing room. I am happy that a pos­it­ive res­ult, draw or win, would see us through the group. I would be more than sat­is­fied with that. There are no easy pick­ings for us. Our goal has to be that we do not slip from these stand­ards and, hope­fully, the addi­tion of a player of Wayne Rooney’s class will take some pres­sure off the defenders.”

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