England 1 Slovenia 0

Eng­land 1 Slov­e­nia 0, Nel­son Man­dela Bay Sta­dium, FIFA Wor­ld Cup Fi­nals Group Sta­ge, June 23, 2010. Eng­land shook off a me­diocre start to the 2010 Wor­ld Cup in So­uth Africa to edge out Slov­e­nia 1-0 in Port Eliza­beth. Thanks to a bril­liant te­am ef­fort The Three Li­ons ma­naged to go thro­ugh to the Sec­ond Ro­und of the tour­na­ment and a clash wi­th Germany. 

Al­ways will­ing to pro­vide a help­ing hand, Man­chester Uni­ted boss Sir Al­ex Fer­guson gave Way­ne Roo­ney some much need­ed ad­vice on the tele­phone ahead of the group sta­ge en­counter ag­ainst Slov­e­nia. The Eng­land si­de pressed hard from the very be­gin­ning, but the Slov­enes kept the red shirts at bay dur­ing the open­ing sta­ges of the fix­ture. Then, in the 23rd min­ute of the tie, Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur front­man Jer­main De­foe ma­naged to give some wel­come re­lief to the 30,000 Eng­land sup­port­ers at Nel­son Man­dela Bay Sta­dium when he put his coun­try ahead af­ter meet­ing a good cross from Ja­mes Mil­ner. The White Hart Lane fa­vour­ite also had the ball in the net shortly af­ter the ha­lf time re­fresh­ments, but Roo­ney was off­side. At long last, Fa­bio Capello´s men had ma­naged to over­come the fear which had para­lysed their play­ing per­form­ances ag­ainst the Uni­ted States and Al­ger­ia. The 1-0 win over the Cent­ral Europeans in Port Eliza­beth was a lot more con­vin­cing than the sco­reline would in­dic­ate, how­ever, and Eng­land should have won by more if it had­n’t be­en for Ud­inese and Slov­e­nia cus­todi­an Samir Handan­ovic. Roo­ney was ev­entually re­placed by Joe Cole in the 72nd min­ute of the mat­ch af­ter ag­grav­at­ing his ankle in­jury, but the stri­ker was most cer­tain to start the next ga­me. The Three Li­ons fin­ish­ing sec­ond in their group meant that they would now be up ag­ainst Ger­many at Free State Sta­dium in Bloem­fon­tein. Eng­land Te­am: Da­vid Ja­mes, Glen John­son, Ash­ley Cole, John Terry, Matt Up­son, Ste­ven Ger­rard, Frank Lam­pard, Gar­eth Bar­ry, Ja­mes Mil­ner, Way­ne Roo­ney, Jer­main De­foe. Sub­stitutes: Aar­on Len­non, Mi­chael Dawson, Steph­en War­nock, Mi­chael Car­rick, Joe Cole, Shaun Wright-Phil­lips, Emile Hes­key, Pe­ter Crouch, Rob Green, Joe Hart. Slov­e­nia Te­am: Samir Handan­ovic, Bostjan Cesar, Marko Suler, Bo­jan Jokic, An­draz Kirm, Miso Brecko, Ro­bert Koren, Aleksander Ra­dosavljevic, Milivo­je Novakovic, Zlatan Lju­bi­jankic, Val­ter Birsa. Sub­stitutes: Elvedi­in Dzin­ic, Suad Filekovic, Branko Ilic, Matej Mav­ric, An­drej Komac, Dalibor Stevan­ovic, Rene Krhin, Zlatko Ded­ic, Tim Matavz, Jas­min Handan­ovic, Aleskander Seliga.

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