After a stuttering start and a bit of help from their opponents, England added gloss to the scoreline in the second half, and Wayne Rooney equalled Bobby Charlton’s record, before watching Harry Kane and Theo Walcott make hay from his seat on the bench.
The pitch and opposition have to be factors when evaluating both the individual and team efforts today, but Jonjo Shelvey was particularly impressive at the heart of midfield, as England confirmed qualification with three games to spare. It’s been comfortable, at times comical in its simplicity, but they are in and that’s something to celebrate. In fact, Roy’s off to sample the Serravalle nightlife as we speak.
Thanks for joining me, and for all your e-mails. Bye!
Full-time: San Marino 0-6 England
That’s that. England are going to Euro 2016! The England bench pour onto the pitch, Hodgson Pleats his way across to Jonjo Shelvey and holds him aloft There are a few handshakes, and appreciation from the sizeable away contingent.
90 mins: San Marino win a corner, and it’s not cleared with any great conviction, but breaks to Vardy, who scoots down the right touchline but underhits a pass to Clyne with plenty of options. Kane wins the ball back, advances on goal and tries to sidestep Simoncini, but the goalkeeper does just enough. Two added minutes to come.
87 mins: All three changes have had a positive impact, if only by raising the tempo a final time beyond what San Marino could take. Clyne feeds the ball into Walcott, but his control lets him down 25 yards from goal. Barkley gives away a free kick in the opposition half, and the hosts work the ball upfield, in search of what we’ll broadly call a consolation.
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84 mins: A shot on goal from San Marino – della Valle cuts in from the right and warms Joe Hart’s hands with a curling shot. I can’t recall poor old Harty being in shot at any other stage in the game.
82 mins: Walcott could, probably should, have sealed his hat-trick here, but fires wide of Simoncini’s far post with plenty of time.
80 mins: Alessandro della Valle is on for Davide Simoncini as the hosts make some defensive changes, perhaps too late.
GOAL! San Marino 0-6 England (Walcott)
And another! San Marino have held on gamely but their defence here is as sturdy as a knob of butter approaching a knife. It’s Barkley with the pass, and Walcott who slots the ball home to bag his second of an enjoyable cameo.
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GOAL! San Marino 0-5 England (Kane)
Jonjo Shelvey gets the highlight reel moment his performance has deserved, sending Kane clear with a through ball. You fear for Kane, given his recent concerns, but his finish is exceptional, lifting the ball over Simoncini from a tight angle.
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73 mins: Hodgson makes a mockery of the pitch with a cute drag-back – in formal shoes, no less – as the ball runs into his technical area. San Marino captain Selva is replaced by Rinaldi. Apparently Rooney was withdrawn early to avoid injury, given the state of the pitch. I presumed it wasn’t just to annoy him.
71 mins: Hirsch, who has taken it in turns with Selva to plough the lonest of lone furrows up front, dribbles into the England half but is impatiently forced off the ball by Shaw. Tosi is on for Bonini for the hosts, who are tiring.
GOAL! San Marino 0-4 England (Walcott)
Walcott gets on the scoresheet with his first touch, steering the ball into an empty net after being picked out by Delph’s centre. I think we can all relax now.
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66 mins: Shelvey buys a bit of time in midfield and picks out Vardy with an eye-catching reverse pass, and the ball is worked to Delph, who curves the ball theatrically over the bar. Walcott is coming on for Arsenal colleague Oxlade-Chamberlain.
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64 mins: A familiar pattern to the last five minutes, with England camped upfield trying to squeeze a breakthrough. David Nelson is enjoying our MBM from stage-side at a Belgian festival – he’s the production manager for the Stereophonics, not that he likes to talk about it. Can anyone top that? Do ‘Looks Like Chaplin’!
61 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain, vying with Shelvey for the man-of-the-match award, finds Delph with a cross that arcs over Simoncini. Delph attemps a cross, or shot – you’d have to ask him – by thunking the ball into the turf, and it floats across goal, beyond Kane, and out of play.
58 mins: With the game drifting along and Roy looking peckish, Stones channels his inner Van Basten, attempting a lashed volley from a corner that pings the side netting. Here’s Steven Mills:
“Jonjo Shelvey is looking increasingly like the natural replacement for Michael Carrick as the England player who can not only retain possession, but also actually pass the ball well, and therefore will be overlooked for all major tournaments. N’est-ce pas?”
56 mins: Milner is off for Delph, and Rooney is off for Kane! Boooooooooo. The record will have to wait, until Tuesday at least...
54 mins: This is all about the record now, isn’t it? Rooney gets space in the box, but can’t bring the ball down, before Clyne goes for the unconvential, attempting to tee up Vardy with his knee. It doesn’t quite come off. Harry Kane and Fabian Delph are about to come on.
53 mins: John Stones gets a concentration test from an awkward looping ball forward and fails it miserably, almost gifting a one-on-one to Selva. Jagielka eventually mops up the danger.
51 mins: Rooney barrels down the left, cuts back and goes over a trailing leg. Textbook, but England can’t do anything with the free kick, and have taken their collective foot off the gas since that fearsome start to the second half.
49 mins: Shelvey has offered an engaging mix of smart passing and outrageous shooting from distance, and he wins a corner as his latest hoof from thirty yards is deflected behind, but England make nothing of it. On the touchline, Roy’s mind turns to dinner plans.
47 mins: Shelvey offers another intelligent through ball, lofting it into the vicinity of Vardy and Rooney, but neither commits to it, and the ball goes behind.
“Nice to see Roy relaxed and enjoying the sunshine,” says Jake Lynch. “So different from the days of a wally with a brolly. Today there’s a Brolli who IS a wally.”
GOAL! San Marino 0-3 England (Barkley)
That didn’t take long. Fifteen seconds after the kick-off, Oxlade-Chamberlain dances down the right again, finds a neat centre that flies over Rooney’s head, and lands plum for Barkley to nod in for his first England goal.
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Peep!
We’re off again. No changes...
Goals in the other 5pm qualifiers: Ukraine lead Belarus 3-0 at half-time, and it’s Russia 1-0 Sweden thanks to Artem Dzjuba. Mark Clattenburg is reffing that game, and JR in Illinois has this: “I can report his hair is in fine fettle”.
Half-time: San Marino 0-2 England
The good: England are (let’s just say it) going to Euro 2016, and Wayne Rooney has equalled Bobby Charlton’s record. The less good: England’s goals have come from a bizarre penalty and an own goal, and despite plenty of possession and intent, self-made chances have been thin on the (extremely bobbly) ground.
Back shortly for (hopefully) more goals, more fun in the sun for Roy and a bit of this for Rooney:
47 mins: Rooney is the latest to try a spectacular cross from deep, which sails into Simoncini’s hands. It’s like Steven Gerrard never retired.
45 mins: There will be three added minutes. One of the more promising spells of possession for England sees Rooney and Vardy link up nicely, but Shaw’s attempt at a cross is undercooked. Milner, perhaps guilty of trying too hard in this first half, tries a rushed shot rather than retaining possession, and gives the ball away.
42 mins: After a brief spell inside their own half, Shelvey cuts a swathe through the home defence with a through pass to Vardy, who can cut the ball back to Rooney, but badly misjudges it. When the ball does come in, the Simoncini twins get in each other’s way, allowing Oxlade-Chamberlain a shot at goal – but the goalkeeper gets back to make, quite frankly, an amazing save.
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39 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain and Clyne can’t quite get in sync down the right side, with Clyne bombing forward and being ignored, or staying back with the Arsenal man looking for the overlap. I like this, from Andrew Lyman:
“Maybe they could take Rooney off at half-time and bring Bobby Charlton on? Give him chance to become the first footballer to get 50 for England”.
I suppose that would be ‘disrespectful’, would it, Uefa?
38 mins: It’s training exercise time, with England camped in the final third and rotating the ball to Shaw and Clyne, rather than trying to pick a way through the San Marino back nine. From a corner, Milner picks out Stones, but his downward header is comfortably saved.
36 mins: Shaw attempts another booming left-wing cross, but Simoncini punches it clear, with the penalty box not exactly swarming with England players. He repeats the trick a moment later, but Rooney is crowded out by a fog of blue shirts.
34 mins: Play has stopped again so that the unfortunate Brolli can get further treatment after a clash of heads with Vardy that was hefty enough to pop his Butcheresque bandage clean off his head. Vardy is also off to get checked out, but both players are able to return.
31 mins: So England lead 2-0 thanks to a phantom penalty and an own goal. They haven’t really clicked into gear, but then, they haven’t had to. Oxlade-Chamberlain continues to find the right touchline with ease, but has lacked that killer final ball.
Here’s young buck Matt Dony: “70 year old Roy Allen is right. Everything in the past was better, and today’s footballers are inherently inferior to yesteryear’s. Hopefully, he only listens to albums recorded on analogue equipment rather than modern digital rubbish (Probably folk music). And dries his clothes with a mangle.”
There’s plenty of arguments for each of these two England greats, but one more scuffed goal against these part-timers and Rooney is objectively better.
GOAL! San Marino 0-2 England (Brolli own goal)
Shaw crosses the ball in dangerously from the left, and for a split-second, it looks like Rooney’s big moment – but San Marino centre-back Brolli steals his thunder, getting a bandaged head to it and finding the far corner. Dear me.
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26 mins: Simoncini has been giving it the full Higuita, chasing out to clear after Rooney, then Vardy, get through on goal. Rooney’s chance came from a scuffed goal kick, and would have been a fine way to claim an all-time record.
24 mins: The intensity is fleeting, with Rooney’s record and England’s qualification as good as wrapped up inside the first fifteen minutes. Oxlade-Chamberlain continues to test the back five with his sinewy runs on the ball, before Milner tries a daisy-cutter from a tight angle that clatters the hoardings behind the goal.
21 mins: It’s been physical stuff so far, and not just from the hosts, with Clyne putting in a strong challenge on Vitaioli, and Rooney avoiding a booking for an agricultural lunge at Berardi. Hodgson is straining to see what’s going on with the sun dipping in the sky, despite clearly having a pair of sunnies on him (see pictures below).
19 mins: This could have been THE MOMENT, but Rooney, bearing down on goal from the left-hand side of the area, can only sting Aldo Simoncini’s fingers with his shot. Twin brother Davide – Simoncini, not Rooney – tidies up with Vardy looking for one England goal, never mind 50.
17 mins: A spell of stop-start England possession, with Stones and Jagielka throwing caution to the wind and getting forward for a corner that the hosts scramble away.
Here’s Roy Allen with the sort of incendiary response I feared Alan Cooper might generate: “12 year old Alan Cooper is dead right. Bobby Charlton was rubbish and Wayne Rooney is Messi, Maradona and Pele rolled into one. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either biased or intelligent.”
15 mins: Taking nothing away from Wayne Rooney’s achievement, but after multiple replays, I still can’t conceive why Leontios Trattou, the Cypriot referee, gave a spot kick there. San Marino could surely do without decisions like that.
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GOAL! San Marino 0-1 England (Rooney penalty)
Wayne Rooney is England’s joint-highest ever goalscorer, and has 77 more minutes to claim the record as his own. He rolls the penalty into Simoncini’s left corner as the goalkeeper dives the other way, and puts his head in his hands, a mixture of relief and disbelief.
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Penalty for England!
Confusion reigns as a James Milner free kick appears to strike Stones on the hand – but the referee has seen something, booking Berardi and giving England the penalty!
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9 mins: England’s full-backs, in addition to Vardy and Oxlade-Chamberlain, will look to use the width of the pitch, which is “very wide, if you look at the dimensions”, according to Glenn Hoddle. That’s normally a good way to tell how wide something is. Shaw gets forward and hooks a cross in, but it bypasses everyone on its way out for a goal kick.
8 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain blusters down the right, and looks for Vardy in the middle, but the Leicester striker’s challenge on Brolli is heavy-handed, and is penalised. Brolli needs a spell of treatment, but is able to carry on.
6 mins: The pitch looks, shall we say, testing – and Barkley has been caught out by a bobble on a couple of occasions already. England aren’t the only ones trying something new – Marco Berardi is making his debut for San Marino in midfield, and has been the hosts’ standout player so far, knocking a few nice passes around.
5 mins: San Marino make a foray into the England half, but lone striker Selva misplaces a pass. San Marino coach Pierangelo Maranzoli, arms crossed on the touchline, looks absolutely disgusted.
3 mins: Every San Marino outfield player is situated between the base of the centre circle and the edge of the penalty area. England, understandably, are being patient.
1 min: Shelvey makes himself known immediately, dancing around a couple of challenges and looking for Rooney, who is offside. Here’s Alan Cooper to start an argument:
“I do hope that anyone making invidious comparisons between Rooney and Charlton will look at that video and see what poor defending and rubbish goalkeeping Charlton was often up against. Just how often does the commentator get to say ‘could be a shot from Charlton’ because the defence has backed off so far? Rooney never gets that much time.”
He might do tonight, Alan.
Peep!
Cardboard arches walked through, handshakes made, anthems observed, and we’re off...
Hodgson has been talking up Shelvey and Vardy, saying that they are in the team tonight to offer the same kind of threat as Jack Wilshere, who is out injured, and um, Raheem Sterling, who Hodgson has just compared Vardy to. “Not so much with the dribbling”, he adds unnecessarily.
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With England making plenty of changes, worth taking a look at this, from Martin Laurence, on who should be in the England team on current form. Or you could just watch this again. And again.
There are a few other 5pm kick-offs worth mentioning: Fellow Group E sides Estonia and Lithuania will have a Baltic bust-up in Tallinn, with a playoff spot still a possibility for the winner. In Group G, Russia will need to beat visitors Sweden to keep hope alive of an automatic place, while in Group C, Ukraine can put a little pressure on Spain, who play group leaders Slovakia later, by beating Belarus.
And then there’s Wayne Rooney v Bobby Charlton. Charlton has held the record alone since pulling ahead of Jimmy Greaves in May 1968. Nothing further to add, apart from this:
The venue
San Marino may be pretty rubbish at international football, but they get to play, and indeed live, here, so who’s laughing now?
Roy Hodgson has been out inspecting the facilities, looking as ever like a man who is absolutely loving his work.
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Stones, Shelvey and Vardy all start, as promised by Roy Hodgson – although the Everton man is alongside club-mate Phil Jagielka in the middle, rather than at right-back. Vardy, Barkley and Oxlade-Chamberlain will line up in an attacking midfield three behind the man of the hour, Wayne Rooney. Rooney and Joe Hart are the only starters who also began England’s last qualifier, June’s win in Slovenia, as Roy rings the changes.
Team news
San Marino: Aldo Simoncini, Bonini, Brolli, Davide Simoncini,
Palazzi, Berardi; Battistini, Chiaruzzi, Matteo Vitaioli, Hirsch; Selva.
Subs: Benedettini, Berretti, Alessandro Della Valle, Alex Della Valle, Golinucci, Mazza, Rinaldi, Stefanelli, Tosi, Valentini, Fabio Vitaioli, Muraccini.
England: Hart; Clyne, Jagielka, Stones, Shaw; Milner, Shelvey, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Barkley, Vardy; Rooney.
Subs: Butland, Heaton, Smalling, Cahill, Gibbs, Carrick, Delph, Mason, Sterling, Walcott, Kane.
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Preamble
Hello. Come on in, take a seat, grab a croissant. It’s time for England’s Big Euro 2016 Qualification Party! That’s right, win tonight - and win they surely will - and England will book their place in France’s expanded continental jamboree.
Foregone conclusions in football are few and far between, but games against San Marino surely come close. Take your pick from several eye-watering stats, but the bottom line is that to spoil the party, San Marino will have to do what they’ve managed just five times in 127 internationals, and not lose.
England are poised to qualify in a manner commensurate with the comfort of their qualifying campaign. A place in France has felt something of a formality ever since Danny Welbeck’s opening goal in Basel 362 days ago. With the low final hurdle in sight, Roy Hodgson is calling on Stones, Shelvey and Vardy - not a local firm of solicitors, but three in-form, adaptable squad players with a chance to push for greater prominence.
So, barring a seismic shock, England will rubber-stamp their place in France, and learn a little more about themselves while they’re at it. Wayne Rooney can become England’s outright record goalscorer with two goals against largely amateur opponents, and we can all watch this again. What’s not to love?
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Niall will be here soon.
