Poland 1 England 1

The mat­ch went to and fro dur­ing the early sta­ges of the fir­st ha­lf of the tie wi­th bo­th of the te­ams strug­gling to find any prop­er rhythm in their at­tack­ing play. But as the hard fou­ght mat­ch wore on, Wal­de­mar Fornalik´s men star­ted to put more pres­sure on Roy Hodgson´s si­de. Way­ne Roo­ney non­ethe­less ma­naged to score the open­er ag­ainst the run of play when the Man­chester Uni­ted for­ward head­ed a well taken cor­ner-kick by Liver­pool play­maker Ste­ven Ger­rard in­to the back of the net in the 31st min­ute. Eng­land al­most doubled their lead in the 69th min­ute of ac­tion when Man­chester United´s Dan­ny Wel­beck chased down a clev­er ball on the left si­de of the area from Man­chester City mid­field mo­tor Ja­mes Mil­ner and played it back to Roo­ney who power­ed his shot just a few in­ches over the cross­bar. On­ly one min­ute la­ter, how­ever, Torino´s Kamil Glik ma­naged to head a dan­ger­ous cor­ner from Bor­deaux mid­fielder Ludovic Obra­niak pa­st Joe Hart in the Eng­land goal and in­to the net to level things out at the packed £400 mil­lion Na­tion­al Sta­dium in Warzaw.

Even tho­ugh Joe Hart was mostly to blame for the goal as the Man­chester City shot stop­per failed to clear the ball, he was not help­ed much by the de­fenders. The Pol­ish play­ers push­ed hard for a win­ner as the Wor­ld Cup Quali­fier wore on and wi­th as little as ten min­utes left on the clock of Itali­an ref­er­ee Gi­an­luca Roc­chi, Tur­in de­fender Kamil Glik near­ly net­ted his sec­ond goal of the even­ing, on­ly to see his power­ful head­er go­ing over the cross­bar. The White and Reds con­tin­ued to chal­lenge the over­worked Eng­land de­fence as the ga­me fizzled out, but the back four kept their con­cen­tra­tion to en­sure that the vis­it­ing te­am went ho­me wi­th an im­port­ant point in the bag. All in all, it was an en­ter­tain­ing mat­ch des­pite the play­ing con­di­tions and a fully de­served draw for The Three Li­ons who now could look for­ward to their up­com­ing fix­tures wi­th a much great­er de­gree of con­fid­ence. Po­land Te­am: Przemyslaw Tyton, Lukasz Piszczek, Mar­cin Wasilewski, Kamil Glik, Jak­ub Wawrzyniak, Grzegorz Kry­chow­iak, Ludovic Obra­niak, Eu­gen Po­lanski, Pawel Wszolek, Ro­bert Le­wan­dowski, Kamil Grosicki. Sub­stitutes: To­masz Kusz­czak, Lukasz Skorupski, Mar­cin Ko­morowski, Dami­en Per­quis, Grzegorz Wo­jtkowiak, Ar­i­el Borysi­uk, Ad­ri­an Mierze­jew­ski, Ra­fal Mur­awski, Wal­de­mar So­bota, Arka­di­usz Mi­lik, Arka­di­usz Piech, Ar­tur Sobiech. Eng­land Te­am: Joe Hart, Glen John­son, Phil Ja­gielka, Ash­ley Cole, Jo­leon Le­scott, Ja­mes Mil­ner, Mi­chael Car­rick, Ste­ven Ger­rard, Tom Clev­er­ley, Way­ne Roo­ney, Jer­main De­foe. Sub­stitutes: Fraser For­ster, John Rud­dy, Kyle Walk­er, Ry­an Shaw­cross, Dan­ny Wel­beck, Leigh­ton Baines, Ga­ry Ca­hill, Ad­am John­son, Aar­on Len­non, Al­ex Oxlade-Cham­ber­lain, Jonjo Shel­vey, Andy Carroll.

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