By Myles Palmer
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Macedonia 1 England 2
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Hristov 27, Rooney 53, Beckham 63(pen)
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The minnows of Macedonia outplayed England for 50 minutes.
If they had believed in themselves, they could have won.
SVEN IS SO LUCKY!
Beckham got England out of jail yet again.
And Sven’s subtitution was bullseye.
Or was it Brian Kidd’s substitution?
England are always rubbish in September, so it was hardly surprising that a midfield that had never played together stuttered for 45.
Sven told them to hit long balls for Michael Owen.
Beckham’s first pass was a 50-yarder onto the centreback’s head.And England went on like that.
Sol Campbell had four revealing moments after 10 minutes, 21,24 and 27.
After 10, as Pandev ran in behind him, Sol ducked below waist height to head a cross out for a corner.
He did not trust his left foot. So why not hoof it out for a corner with his right foot?
After 21,Shakiri hit a clever diagonal ball over John Terry and Sol made a fantastic recovery to flick the ball away.
After 24, he got a yellow card for tackling Hristov from behind on the halfway line.
As soon as England tried to play a bit of football they lost the ball and conceded.
It was Beckham to Rooney to Beckham to Hargreaves to Cole,who played a sloppy ball back to Hargreaves, who seemed so disgusted by the pass that he didn’t chase back.
Hargreaves just jogged back.
Cole tried to win the ball back in their half but couldn’t.
Macedonia broke on the right and Grozdanovski crossed a ball which was going to bounce in front of Sol.
Instead of putting it into Row Z with his left foot, or kicking it out for a corner with his right, Sol tried to head a ball that was coming to him at ankle height.
Bizarrely, he got his forehead down so low that he managed to head the ball between his own legs, something he couldn’t do again if he practiced it 50 times.
The ball wrong-footed Terry.
Pandev’s shot would have been saved by David James but hit Gary Neville on the elbow and broke for Hristov, who knocked it in off James’s shins.
Second half,Heskey for Lampard was exactly the right change and Heskey soon nodded down a Becks pass for Rooney to fire the equaliser.
Then Braga, the Brazilian-born sub, took away Terry’s trailing leg in the box, a silly penalty which Becks buried confidently.
I’m told the racist chanting was by 16 people out of an 18,000 crowd.
The police could have pulled those 16, but didn’t.
What else is new?
I’m also told today that cliques within the camp now want Owen to replace Becks as skipper.
Not a good idea.Strikers are never good captains.
And I’m no Owen fan, even if he does talk moderately at all times.
Becks should just keep his gob shut about taunts and threats on the pitch.
At 28 he should not over-react to threats like, “You’ll never get out of here alive.”
David Beckham, the world’s most famous footballer, should now be oblivious to standard gamesmanship.
Anything Becks says is world news, so he should be far more careful.
Is it true that England trained at The Cliff last week, not at Carrington, so that Becks would not bump into Sir Alex?
I think we should be told.
Surely, if England trained at The Cliff, The Sun would have had the story?
Liechtenstein?
Sven should keep the team that finished this game.
Turkey?
He should have Butt-Hargreaves in the middle, Gerrard left,Becks right, Rooney as a half-striker.
If Sven does that, England won’t lose.
September 8th 2003.