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England cruise to easy win over USA

29/05/2008

John Terry marked his return as captain by setting England on the way to a comfortable 2-0 victory over the USA at Wembley.

In his third game in charge, coach Fabio Capello failed to bring in a number of new faces, as had been widely predicted.

The safe options of David James in goal and David Beckham, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard were given the nod over promising youngsters Joe Hart and David Bentley.

With nine of the starting XI having lined up in the last World Cup, it was almost inevitable that the opening minutes of the friendly brought back memories of the insipid performances of Sven-Goran Erikkson's tenure.

As Wayne Rooney was forced ever deeper, England's best chances came from outside the box, notably through long shots from Gerrard and Beckham's trademark in-swinging free kicks.

However, it was a Beckham cross which set up the opening goal of the game, with skipper Terry climbing the highest and powering a header into the bottom corner.

This sparked some life into Capello's side as Jermain Defoe looked lively and caused an overwhelmed US defence trouble, while Terry's Chelsea teammate Ashley Cole looked to get forward as much as possible.

England were nevertheless lucky not to find themselves back to square one as the visitors attacked straight from the restart, though Eddie Johnson could only put a half-volley narrowly over.

After that escape, it was all England and the score could have been considerably more as Rooney went close with an overhead kick and Defoe shot straight at the keeper twice.

However, the hosts had to settle for just the two goals, with the impressive Gareth Barry threading the ball through to his possible future Liverpool colleague Gerrard, who finished calmly.