England 3 Argentina 2 – Friendly, 2005

Friendly International, Geneva. Saturday November 12, 2005.

England: P.Robinson, L.Young (P.Crouch 81), W.Bridge (P.Konchesky 45), L.King (J.Cole 57), J.Terry, R.Ferdinand, D.Beckham, F.Lampard, W.Rooney, M.Owen, S.Gerrard.

England snatched a thrilling victory over Argentina with two late Michael Owen goals in what was quite possibly the greatest friendly game ever played.

The game started quietly and at a relaxed pace with the Argentinians maintaining comfortable possession for the first five minutes before England won a corner following a muscular break by Wayne Rooney.

The corner came to nothing but the incident seemed to galvanise Argentina into more serious action, as though offended that England should have the audacity to mount an attack.

From here on in the pace quickened and the action never stopped.

The Argentinian playmaker Riquelme gave a signal of his intentions by stinging Paul Robinson’s fingertips from the edge of the box.

Rooney then chipped through for Michael Owen to head into the far corner only for a marginal offside call to cancel the effort out.

Playing in the hole and proving extremely elusive to England’s holding player Ledley King, Riquelme began to really get a grip on the midfield.

Robinson was called upon to save again, this time from Tevez and as the ball rebounded into the box bodies were flung everywhere as four shots were charged down before the danger finally passed.

The respite was brief, however. Within two minutes Robinson had made another fingertip save from Zanetti and Crespo had forced the ball past him although again the goal would not stand.

Crespo had barged through the back of Rio Ferdinand to get to the ball, although it was not clear whether this had been the offence punished or if a handball had been given.

England responded to this pressure with Frank Lampard putting a clear header wide from David Beckham’s right wing corner.

Then Wayne Rooney, possibly sensing a personal battle with Riquelme for top billing, came to the fore.

First he headed wide from Beckham’s centre before coming within a whisker of giving England the lead.

Steven Gerrard fed him with a telling through ball, Rooney took the ball in his stride with a magnificent touch and flipped his shot over the onrushing keeper.

Cruelly, the ball landed squarely at the base of the far post and squirted to safety away from the lurking Owen.

Then a rampant Rooney powered his way into the box before tumbling against Ayala. It could have been given as a penalty but the referees’ refusal was probably just.

With England apparently gaining control the Argentinians stormed upfield to take the lead.

Rodriguez slipped beyond the rusty Wayne Bridge with ease to play a killer ball across Robinson which Crespo slid home with relish at the far post.

The only surprising thing about this goal was that it had taken so long to arrive.

Within a minute Gerrard had sent a thunderbolt towards goal which Abbondanzieri got the faintest touch to, not spotted by the referee but vital nonetheless.

Then England were level. Beckham moved infield to supply a deft header which Rooney pounced on, sliding a side footed finish inside the keepers’ left hand post from fifteen yards.

Paul Robinson still had to pull out another top save to keep out a Tevez effort from distance to keep the sides level at the interval.

Half Time: England 1 Argentina 1

Any thoughts that the second half might be more sedate than the first were quickly dispelled.

Paul Konchesky had come on for the struggling Bridge at half time and soon looked equally uncomfortable.

The competitive nature of the game was emphasised by a booking for Lampard. It had not been his first crunching challenge.

Argentina had wrested the initiative again with everything going through the outstanding Riquelme.

When his side were awarded a free kick thirty yards out England were on red alert as the dangerman apparently lined up a shot.

This was a bluff. Shaping to shoot, Riquelme instead chipped a ball to England’s back post. Walter Samuel had got himself against Konchesky and was always favourite, although the England replacement made his task even more straightforward by declining to challenge.

Samuel’s header back across goal was already in before a clutch of his teammates arrived to make absolutely sure.

England missed a great chance to equalise almost immediately. A trademark, arrowed diagonal ball from the right wing by Beckham saw Gerrard power to the by-line to cut an inviting ball back into the path of Lampard.

From the edge of the area Lampard’s side footed finish was, for once, off target.

Now England gambled by removing King and bringing Joe Cole into the fray.

The Chelsea sprite immediately began to have an impact with some purposeful dribbling and the game remained very much in the melting pot.

Beckham sent in a rasping effort from distance that the keeper could not hold and then Lampard was fractionally off target with a stinging left footed half volley from the edge of the box.

Beckham was given another chance with a free kick thirty yards out. Again the keeper could not hold the effort and Owen was unfortunate to see his lunging shot from the rebound snuffed out.

Ten minutes from time Robinson was again in the action, making a vital double save to keep his team in the match.

Now Eriksson sent on the lanky Peter Crouch in place of Luke Young with Gerrard continuing his magical mystery tour of a game by slotting in at right back.

With time running out the irrepressible Rooney again burst into life. First he tried a spectacular volley from distance and got it spectacularly wrong before a magnificent piece of control and vision saw him execute a delicious chip which Abbondanzieri did extremely well to desperately claw behind for a corner.

England were now piling forward and the Argentinians, without the withdrawn Riquelme, were wilting.

Three minutes from time the equaliser came. Gerrard strode forward into space down the right and drove over a telling ball to the far post and there was Owen, heading down and back across goal into the net.

It was typical Owen. His second half touches could be counted on the fingers of one hand but his contribution, when it came, was vital.

England still came forward. Rooney centred for Beckham to test the keeper with a header before the game was settled in injury time.

Cole received on the left and drifted towards the edge of the area. With Beckham outside him the obvious pass, Cole suddenly darted inside and whipped a great ball into the near post where Owen pounced again to send a firm header low past Abbondanzieri.

It was a fittingly thrilling conclusion to a game that had been compulsively exciting throughout.

Full Time: England 3 Argentina 2

Robinson 9, Young 7, Bridge 4 (Konchesky 5), King 5 (J.Cole 8), Terry 6, Ferdinand 6, Beckham 8, Lampard 7, Rooney 9, Owen 8, Gerrard 8.

Comment & Analysis

Bring It On. What a game.

It was not the fact that England beat Argentina 3-2 after two late Michael Owen goals in Geneva today that made the encounter so compulsively uplifting, it was the sheer magnificence of the whole game.

Indeed, the snatching of victory after Argentina had withdrawn possibly the games’ outstanding player, Riquelme, could perhaps be a little misleading. It would certainly have been incredibly hard on England to come away from such a thrilling game without at least a draw, however.

Long after the dust has settled on who had the most chances, or most possession, best penalty claims or the harshest disallowed goal England should remember how much of their strength lies in and around the other teams’ box and what is possible when they let caution slip and seek to exploit these strengths.

Please God let Sven remember the gut wrenching way his, and our, team has been knocked out of the last two major championships seeking, ineptly, to hang on to leads.

It is a fact that almost all of Sven’s best moments in charge of England have come when his team have gone behind and his apparent natural caution has had to be abandoned.

Sven’s latest attempt to solve the conundrum of how to get the best out of his vaunted midfield involved Ledley King playing a holding role behind Beckham, Gerrard and Lampard.

This move did not work.

I am not a fan of playing a central defender in this role, for even though King is better with his feet than most defenders that is what he really is.

Nations who use this role employ genuine midfield players in it, players who play it week in and week out for their clubs.

England have one such player and he is Michael Carrick, a man Eriksson seems to have no intention of selecting. If this is the case his best option seems to be to play a straight four in midfield and let them cope with the defensive side of things as best they can.

If Eriksson could allow himself to trust his men to score more than the opposition rather than worry about what might happen at the other end it would surely be to everyones’ benefit. After all, England will always concede a goal or two to the best sides anyway and if we are to lose surely that is the way we want to go, isn’t it?

The worst thing about the holding role as demonstrated by King is that he hardly ever actually stepped into the midfield at all. This meant that Argentina always had a numerical advantage in the middle and were breaking at King and the defence with the ball already under their control.

This made King powerless to tackle or intercept and time and again the quick passing Argentinians swept past him. I am not pointing the finger at King for this, once players of that calibre have the ball at their feet and are running towards you there is nothing you can do except hope they don’t score.

To influence the game the holding player still has to play in midfield and win his challenges early, to nip things in the bud. He just does not go bombing forward like we want Frank and Stevie to.

Anyway, at least Joe Cole’s performance in replacing King should have offered some encouragement to his manager to be a little bolder.

Playing in the manner you always feel he might, Cole made a definite impact with his confident, purposeful running and, crucially, his extra quality.

In fairness to Cole no manager has ever seemed to really place their complete trust in his abilities but now has to be the time for Eriksson to do so.

Give him the shirt but also make it clear you expect him to deliver performances of this nature. He might be found wanting sometimes but at least we would be going down in the right manner, and if he does get it right he can hurt anybody.

As for the game as a whole it was simply too full of incident to try to recount the incidents as they happened and of a quality hard to describe in words.

It was what football would be in a perfect world, especially given that we actually won, and was what football can be, but so seldom is.

Above all it was what you would hope the World Cup will be, but there can be no guarantees of that.

After all, in a World Cup the Argies would surely have been calling on an impressive array of spoiling tactics and Eriksson would have been hauling off attackers and throwing on Owen Hargreaves and the like at every turn.

I leave it to you to piece together the action as best you can and decide which pieces of skill were the most memorable, there is no shortage of choice.

Lampard’s left footed half volley grazing the post? Or Gerrard’s thunderbolt which brought an unacknowledged, though magnificent, save from the keeper? An all too rare drive from Beckham that forced another save from the keeper or the succession of evil centres he put over from the right?

The balls’ we all remember Beckham putting over from the flank for Manchester United which were, and obviously remain, as potent a weapon as football has ever seen, yet which the deliverer himself seems to have mysteriously tired of unveiling.

Or did you prefer the moment when Steven Gerrard sent over his own right wing centre? Completely of his own trademark it was every bit as dangerous as any provided by Beckham and having the added bonus of being nodded into the net by Michael Owen. I think we all enjoyed that one. And Joe Cole’s wasn’t bad either.

And of course there was Rooney. Watching this guy play is just unbelievable. How old is he? I don’t even know but he’s actually going to get better. Can you believe it?

He plays a role which only the truly special players can play at international level and all the others good enough to do it have grown into it halfway through their careers. They couldn’t do it when they were boys.

Who exactly was Zinedine Zidane when he was Rooney’s age? Did he play football? Pele and Maradona were magnificent players at Rooney’s age but they were just forwards, forwards with genius but just forwards. They became complete football geniusses later.

Personally I love just watching Rooney receive a ball. As soon as he sees it coming his head is up having a quick look round and in that instant he knows what he’s going to do with it. Then, if he decides to keep it, his head is back up working out what to do next. It’s so easy for him it’s scary, everything is the work of a moment and, basically, everything is right. What a player.

Against the Argies he hit the post, scored and had a sublime chipped attempt clawed desperately to safety by an inspired keeper barely off his line. Each of these incidents bear watching closely, not for the end product but for the seemingly effortless way in which Rooney made them into chances.

Watch him and then imagine another striker on the end of them. I even think he might have meant to put his goal in with the bottom of his studs.

Of course it would not have been such a great game, and it truly was a great game, if the Argentinians had not played so superbly themselves but there is not time, and it is not strictly my job, to do justice to their performance.

Their contribution can be summed up quite neatly and succinctly by pointing out that Paul Robinson was magnificent and that they possibly had the best player on the pitch in Riquelme. He was fantastic.

I would like to think that he would have encountered a few more challenges in the real thing, however, and feel Gary Neville and Ashley Cole will make a profound difference to the stability of our defence, if we are considering the game in a World Cup context (they might say the same about Rooney but would you want to tackle him?).

All in all it was certainly just the performance to make everyone forget about the recent past and have us all looking forward towards the summer with the tongues’ of a rabid dog.

Lets hope the footballers do for us next summer what the cricketers did for us this. I think there are a couple of important aspects we should take from the Ashes into the World Cup.

One is the absolutely positive attitude the England cricketers maintained throughout in defeating the best team in the world (take note Sven), and the second is that guy they had on all the adverts dressed up as W.G. Grace preaching the gospel.

I say get him a replica 1966 shirt, a miniature Jules Rimet Trophy and get him on a plane to Germany.

“Bring it On!”.