The Three Lions Edge Out Norway

Ash­ley Young

Roy Hodgson´s Eng­land team laboured to a nar­row 1–0 suc­cess against Nor­way at the Ull­evaal Sta­dium in Oslo on Sat­urday. The Three Lions should have taken the lead in the fifth minute of the game when bandy legged winger Stew­art Down­ing crossed for fel­low Liv­er­pool player Andy Car­roll but the front­man could only head wide.

There was not much to remem­ber from this match, if looked from a Nor­we­gian point of view. In the ninth minute of the inter­na­tional friendly encounter, Manchester United winger Ash­ley Young put the vis­it­ing side into an early lead after an abso­lutely stun­ning indi­vidual per­form­ance. That proved to be enough to over­come a Nor­we­gian team that had not lost an inter­na­tional game at their Ull­evaal Sta­dium since June 2010. The long ball mer­chants of Nor­way almost got an equal­iser shortly after, though, when Black­burn Rovers favour­ite Morten Gamst Ped­er­sen hit the wood­work for the hosts dir­ectly from a flag kick. Eng­land dom­in­ated the first period and Manchester City mid­fielder James Mil­ner put the Nor­we­gian net cus­todian to the test with a bril­liant effort in the 34th minute. Only eight minutes before the sound of the half time sig­nal, how­ever, Steven Ger­rard was booked for a mind­less and unne­ces­sary chal­lenge on Nor­way defender Tom Hogli that brought jeers and boos from the home crowd. Egil Olsen´s plucky play­ers pressed hard for a lev­el­ling goal dur­ing the second period but they could not find the back of net. And although the Nor­way sup­port­ers felt that The Three Lions had used excess­ively phys­ical tac­tics to win the game, it was a decent start for newly appoin­ted man­ager Roy Hodg­son. Eng­land: Robert Green, Joleon Lescott, Leighton Baines, Phil Jones, Phil Jagielka, Ash­ley Young, James Mil­ner, Stew­art Down­ing, Steven Ger­rard, Scott Parker, Andy Car­roll. Sub­sti­tutes: Gareth Barry, Theo Wal­cott, Jordan Hende­r­son, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Adam Johnson.

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