England 2 Turkey 0 (Football in General)

Name: Marc Feld

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Product:	Football in General
Date:	03.04.03 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Top of the table, something to build on, peromising performance

Disadvantages: referee, crowd trouble, Beckham to miss next match

The first twenty minuets of this game David Beckham was like a man possessed. He was soon yellow carded but it had no effect he was still charging in with the tackles. He was very lucky to still be on the pitch at half time. The rest of the first half was very poor. There was good running off the ball but most of the passes went astray.

There was a good mix of long balls from the back, in hope of a forward getting on the end of them and good build up play. However as I have said previously the passing was the big letdown.

The second half was much, much better. Turkey hardly had the ball in the England Penalty area. There were goal mouth incidents at both ends and yellow cards galore. At times the referee made some very bad decisions which lead to some rather unpleasant confrontations between players. This tended to distract from the good football being played by both teams.

Reo Ferdinand and Sol Campbell were solid at the back and an asset at corners at both ends. Both came close to scoring. These two look good together and could become one of the best central defenders we have had.

Beckham was in the second half his usual inspirational self. His increased ability to faint a pass in phenomenal. You can see that he really works hard on his technique.

Owen had a quiet game but contributed with good forward runs and support play. Again if he had had the service, passing again who knows what might have been. He went off with an injury and on came Darius Vassell though he sounds like a manufactured pop (star) he is in fact a very accomplished striker. Within 20 minuets of coming on had put England in front on 76 minuets. After latching onto a thunderous Ferdinand shot that rebounded off the Turkish keeper. Who incidentally had a great game probably due to the amount of come-and-get-me messages he has been sending out to Premier clubs lately.

Wayne Rooney was the star of the show had a brilliant debut he almost scor
ed very early on. Only his lack of experience let him down. It?s the old catch 22 situation the only way to get over it is to play more games and to be honest he has plenty of time on his side. Hopefully he is one for the future if he dose not get burnt out by club and county.

It was only a matter of time before a decisive incident occurred, there were many but the referee failed to see or failed to take action on many of them. It was that type of game. A penalty awarded to England when Dyer only on the pitch for seconds was deemed to have been pulled down in the box. The replay showed that he simply lost his balance although he had had his shirt tugged seconds before so it was probably justified in the end.

This gave centre stage to David captain fantastic Beckham to step up and launch an unstoppable low shot into the bottom left hand corner of the net to make it 2-0 in the dying moments of the game. A well won match much improved in the second half. It was good enough and there is still room for improvement. I just whish that Eriksson would stop messing about with formations and team selection and work with what he has. This England team has huge potential the proverbial sleeping giant.

Summary: