Danny Welbeck scored twice, the first with his shin, as England began
their Euro 2016 qualifycampaign with a lively 2-0 win away to
Switzerland, their toughest rivals in the group, on Monday.
Raheem Sterling was involved in both goals as England gave a
vastly-improved performance on their World Cup outings, where they went
out in the group stage, and their lumbering 1-0 friendly win over Norway
on Wednesday.
Switzerland, playing their first match under new coach Vladimir
Petkovic, showed few flashes of the form which took them to the last 16
in Brazil, a campaign which ended with a heartbreaking last-gasp 1-0
defeat by Argentina.
The Swiss fielded eight members of the team who started that game in Sao
Paulo as they suffered their first competitive home defeat for four
years, when they lost 3-1 to the same opponents.
Welbeck broke the deadlock when he met Sterling's low cross in his
stride and the ball flew into the net off his shin after Gokhan Inler
lost possession in midfield in the 58th minute.
Welbeck then made England's opening Group E game safe in stoppage time
when he produced the finishing touch to a counter-attack, started by
Sterling and continued by Rickie Lambert, as the Swiss were pressing for
an equaliser.
With the top two reaching the finals from a group which contains
Slovenia, Estonia, San Marino and Lithuania, and the third-placed team
either qualifying directly or going into a playoff, England already seem
to be halfway to France and even the defeated Swiss still have little
cause for concern.
"Switzerland don't lose at home and we had to work hard for it because
we missed our chances earlier," Hodgson, who coached the Swiss at the
1994 World Cup, told reporters.
"When we can counter-attack against teams, the pace, energy and the youth of the team is shown to good effect.
"We adopted a reasonably bold approach because I know if it's going to
work in the future, if this group of players is going to become any
good, we have to do it from the start. Luckily, we got the result which
will help us."
Former Lazio coach Petkovic said his Switzerland team paid for two
mistakes. "It was a shame to lose the first game," he told reporters.
"We were a bit nervous, we made two mistakes as a result of insecurity."
CLEVER FLICK
England should have gone ahead in the 29th minute when Welbeck cleverly
flicked the ball away from Steve von Bergen and broke down the right,
but then undid his good work by failing to pick out Sterling or Rooney
with the Swiss defence all at sea.
Rooney forced Yann Sommer to scoop the ball away with a curling shot on
the turn and there was nobody to pick up the rebound before the
goalkeeper, brought in after Diego Benaglio's international retirement,
made a superb one-handed save to turn away a Phil Jones header from the
resulting corner.
Switzerland went close when Jones gave the ball away on the edge of the
area to Xherdan Shaqiri, who slipped it to Haris Seferovic and England
keeper Joe Hart saved his left-footed effort with his outstretched leg.
Switzerland made a bright start to the second half as Stephan
Lichtsteiner sent Ricardo Rodriguez's low cross over the bar and Hart
denied Seferovic, this time from a half volley.
The Swiss, playing in front of a subdued sellout crowd at the St
Jakob-Park, were denied an equaliser when Josip Drmic broke through the
England defence and rounded Hart only to see his effort cleared off the
line by Gary Cahill.
But the hosts were erratic in midfield and failed to make use of the
pace of Lichtsteiner and Rodriguez down the flanks as they slumped to a
disappointing defeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment