England captain rises to sixth on his country’s all-time scorers’ list on a night to remember the present rather than the pastOver to you then, Harry. From the flames of the Sterling affair, the dark talk of vendettas and humps and all the rest of it; from all this England found a moment of cold, still calm at Wembley.Never mind that they also found opponents so astonishingly poor the Montenegrin defence seemed at times to be putting on a highly crafted, beautifully choreographed piece of physical comedy. Related: England celebrate 1,000th game with seven-goal charge into Euro 2020 finals The two worst things about England football: the urge to sell itself at every turn and a deadly obsession with the...
The England manager was questioning himself over his reaction to Monday’s racist abuse while his Montenegrin counterpart denied it had happened. Uefa cannot do likewisePerhaps the most depressing part about what happened in the Podgorica City Stadium is that, by now, those of us who have followed English teams on their foreign excursions have been in this position – expressing outrage, demanding tougher sanctions and all the other noise in this familiar pattern – more times than we can probably remember.Over time what you learn is that it does not get any easier hearing the primitive “ooh-oohing” that assailed Danny Rose, for example, when he was impudent enough to commit a foul, wearing an England shirt, and parts of the...
Montenegro and Serbia’s historic meeting, unhappy memories for England and the Republic of Ireland, and Georgi Petkov’s international return – at 42Twelve years after Montenegro achieved independence and 11 years after they were formally recognised by Fifa, they meet Serbia for the first time. The match is, according to goalkeeper Danijel Petkovic, the biggest in the nation’s history. After two games the teams are level on points at the top of Group C4, adding competitive edge to an already spicy encounter. Serbia are far from full strength: Crystal Palace’s Luka Milivojevic is one of several players to have dropped out of the squad since the World Cup after falling out with the manager, Mladen Krstajic, while the captain, Nemanja Matic,...