Algeria 0 England 0

Ag­ainst an Al­geri­an te­am play­ing in their fir­st Wor­ld Cup for twenty-four years, the Eng­land si­de failed to de­liv­er the goods and showed no sign of sig­ni­fic­ant im­prove­ment in their sec­ond mat­ch of the tour­na­ment. Ex­pec­ted by most pun­dits to out­shine his peers in So­uth Africa, Man­chester Uni­ted ace Way­ne Roo­ney had be­en heav­ily cri­ti­cised for his be­low av­er­age per­form­ance ag­ainst the Uni­ted States at Roy­al Ba­fokeng Sta­dium in Rusten­burg six days earli­er. At Cape To­wn Sta­dium, the Old Traf­ford marks­man con­tin­ued to dis­play me­diocre form in the clash wi­th Al­ger­ia and was held sco­re­less for the sev­enth straight mat­ch as he was un­able to break his goal scor­ing drought ag­ainst The Greens. When his ten­sions threat­ened to boil over at the end of the sec­ond ha­lf, it also be­came ap­par­ent that Rooney´s ma­jor prob­lem was in his mind. And al­though Fa­bio Capello’s play­ers were push­ing hard to score a goal at the end of the ga­me, their at­tempts came to noth­ing and the con­test in Cape To­wn ended goal­less. To qual­i­fy for the next sta­ge in the 2010 So­uth Africa Wor­ld Cup tour­na­ment, Eng­land now need­ed to be­at Slov­e­nia at the Nel­son Man­dela Bay Sta­dium in Port Eliza­beth in their next fix­ture. Al­ger­ia Te­am: Rais M’Bol­hi, Rafik Hal­liche, An­thar Yahia, Madjid Bougherra, Nadir Bel­hadj, Ry­ad Boude­bouz, Foued Kadir, Medhi La­cen, Has­san Yebda, Karim Zi­ani, Karim Mat­mour. Sub­stitutes: Habib Bel­laid, Ab­delkader Laifaoui, Carl Med­jani, Adlene Gué­di­oura, Yazid Man­souri, Djamel Mes­bah, Djamel Ab­doun, Rafik Djeb­bour, Rafik Saifi, Faouzi Chaou­chi, Lounes Ga­ou­aoui. Eng­land Te­am: Da­vid Ja­mes, John Terry, Glen John­son, Gar­eth Bar­ry, Jam­ie Car­ra­gh­er, Ash­ley Cole, Ste­ven Ger­rard, Frank Lam­pard Ju­ni­or, Aar­on Len­non, Emile Hes­key, Way­ne Roo­ney. Sub­stitutes: Mi­chael Dawson, Mat­thew Up­son, Ja­mes Mil­ner, Steph­en War­nock, Mi­chael Car­rick, Joe Cole, Shaun Wright-Phil­lips, Pe­ter Crouch, Jer­main De­foe, Rob Green, Joe Hart.

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