England V Slovenia 1–0

Wayne Rooney

Eng­land shook off a mediocre start to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa to beat Slov­e­nia by 1–0 in front of a 36,000 crowd at Nel­son Man­dela Bay Sta­dium in Port Eliza­beth on Wed­nes­day. Thanks to a bril­liant team effort The Three Lions man­aged to go through to the Second Round of the tour­na­ment and a clash with old rivals Germany. 

Always will­ing to provide a help­ing hand, Manchester United supremo Sir Alex Fer­guson gave Wayne Rooney some much needed advice on the tele­phone earlier this week and the big man now seems to be back in busi­ness. Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur goal poacher Jer­main Defoe man­aged to give some wel­come relief to the 30,000 Eng­land sup­port­ers at Nel­son Man­dela Bay Sta­dium when he put his coun­try ahead in the 23rd minute of the encounter after meet­ing a mag­ni­fi­cent cross from James Mil­ner. The White Hart Lane favour­ite also had the ball in the net shortly after the half time refresh­ments, but his fel­low fron­trun­ner Wayne Rooney was off­side. At long last, Fabio Capello´s Eng­land play­ers man­aged to over­come the fear which para­lysed their play­ing per­form­ances against the United States and Algeria. The 1–0 tri­umph over the Cent­ral Europeans in Port Eliza­beth yes­ter­day was a lot more con­vin­cing than the sco­reline would indic­ate, how­ever, and The Three Lions should have won by more if it hadn’t been for Udinese and Slov­e­nia net cus­todian Samir Handan­ovic. Wayne Rooney was even­tu­ally replaced by for­ward think­ing mid­field player Joe Cole in the 72nd minute of the match after aggrav­at­ing his ankle injury, but the inform Eng­land centre for­ward is most cer­tain to start the cru­cial game against the Ger­mans. Eng­land fin­ish­ing second in their group means that The Three Lions will meet their bit­ter his­tor­ical enemies Ger­many in Bloem­fon­tein this upcom­ing Sunday afternoon.

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