England 1 Belgium 0

Eng­land 1 Bel­gi­um 0, Wemb­ley Sta­dium, In­ter­na­tion­al Friendly Mat­ch, June 2, 2012. Eng­land re­cor­ded yet an­oth­er nar­row vic­tory as they de­feated Bel­gi­um 1-0. In front of an 85,000 crowd at Wemb­ley, Man­chester Uni­ted for­ward Dan­ny Wel­beck hit the win­ning and on­ly goal of the in­ter­na­tion­al friendly mat­ch wi­th a suberb fin­ish in the 36th min­ute of play.

Eng­land had nar­rowly beaten Nor­way by a 1-0 score at the Ull­evaal Sta­dium in Oslo the week­end be­fore, whi­le Bel­gi­um had on­ly ma­naged a 2-2 draw ag­ainst the min­nows of Montenegro at the King Baudouin Sta­dium in Brus­sel in their last fix­ture. The Bel­gian si­de dom­in­ated pos­ses­sion dur­ing the open­ing thirty min­utes of the clash, but their fin­ish­ing was me­diocre. Marc Wilmots´s play­ers had the ball in the net af­ter sev­en­teen min­utes of ac­tion, tho­ugh, but Dries Mer­tens’s goal was right­fully ruled out by mat­ch of­fi­cial Pe­ter Rasmussen‎ for a push on Chel­sea and Eng­land de­fender Ga­ry Ca­hill. Then, in the 36th min­ute of the con­test, Dan­ny Wel­beck latched on to a bril­liant thro­ugh pass from fel­low Man­chester Uni­ted team­mate Ash­ley Young be­fore he beau­ti­fully chipped the ball over a com­pletely help­less Si­mon Migno­let in the Bel­gi­um goal. Old Traf­ford marks­man Way­ne Roo­ney ev­entually came off the ob­scur­ity of the sub­stitutes´ bench to re­place goal scor­er Wel­beck early in the sec­ond ha­lf but he failed to make any ser­i­ous im­pact on the ga­me. Af­ter edging out The Red Dev­ils of Bel­gi­um by a 1-0 mar­gin at Wemb­ley, The Three Li­ons would now go to the 2012 Euro­pean Cham­pi­on­ships in Po­land and Ukraine on the back of two suc­cess­ive friendly vic­tor­ies. Eng­land Te­am: Joe Hart, Ash­ley Cole, Ga­ry Ca­hill, Glen John­son, John Terry, Ash­ley Young, Ja­mes Mil­ner, Al­ex Oxlade-Cham­ber­lain, Dan­ny Wel­beck, Ste­ven Ger­rard, Scott Par­ker. Sub­stitutes: Jo­leon Le­scott, Phil Ja­gielka, Leigh­ton Baines, Stew­art Down­ing, Jor­dan Hen­derson, Theo Wal­cott, Phil Jones, Andy Car­roll, Jer­main De­foe, Way­ne Roo­ney, Jack But­land, Ro­bert Green. Bel­gi­um Te­am: Si­mon Migno­let, Guil­laume Gil­let, Tho­mas Ver­maelen, Jan Ver­tonghen, Moussa Dem­bele, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Eden Haz­ard, Timmy Si­mons, Axel Wit­sel, Kev­in Mir­al­las, Dries Mer­tens. Sub­stitutes: De­nis Odoi, Se­bas­tien Po­cognoli, Nacer Chadli, Ben­jamin De Ceu­laer, Ste­ven De­four, Jelle Vossen, Radja Naing­golan, Chris­ti­an Ben­teke, Ig­or De Ca­margo, Ro­melu Lu­kaku, Olivi­er Renard.

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