England barely beat Tunisia 2-1 in their FIFA World Cup opener in Volgograd Arena on Monday, sharing Group G leadership with Belgium, which easily cruised by Panama 3-0.
The third match of the day saw Sweden winning 1-0 over South Korea. An early goal by the English striker Harry Kane in the 11thminute gave his team the lead, until Tunisia struck back from the penalty spot in the 35th minute by Frejani Sassi to end the first half with a draw.
The second half fell into a pattern of England attacking and Tunisia defending, until the last minutes of the match when Kane's header coverted a corner kick to give England the lead in the 92nd minute.
Kane said England worked hard the whole match and finally scored the winning goal in injury time."We work hard to go into 90 plus minutes and thankful that we got one in the end," he said.
Kane talked about missed opportunities. "In the first half it felt good out there. We could've scored two or three goals in the first half and put the game to bed early," he added. "But in the World Cup against any team they're always going to fight and keep going and we had to deal with that. I'm really pleased with how we played," said Kane, who won the Man of the Match award.
Gareth Southgate, England coach, commended his team for staying intact the entire match.
He said he wanted to boost pressure on Tunisians until an opportunity to score."Our outside center-backs kept pushing forwards and stepping in, creating an overload in wide areas.
The pressure built and built and that's what you have to keep doing. We kept doing the right things and making good decisions and I thought we were good value for the win over 90 minutes," he said.
Tunisia Coach Nabil Maaloul said England was a tough team and a draw would have been a good result for the Tunisians."We were playing against a highly-skilled and highly coordinated team in terms of their forward players. If we were to get a draw it would have been an excellent result for us," Maaloul told the post-match news conference.
He expressed hope Tunisia would have higher levels of concentration in upcoming matches. Ferjani Sassi said they played a good defense against England, but did not deserve to lose after all. "We played a good match defensively, and I don't think we deserved to lose.
We played with five in defence during the second half which helped us to close the spaces," he said.
Meanwhile Belgium had a frustrating first half before easily netting three goals in the second half against Panama. Drie Mertens started off the second half with a fantastic volley to give Belgium the lead and motivate his teammates to start creating more chances.
The second goal resulted from a lovely attack by Eden Hazard leading the ball to Kevin De Bruyne who looped the ball to Romelu Lukaku who dove in with a header into the goal, to give his team a 2-0 lead in the 69th minute.
Lukaku capitalized an assist by Hazard to net the third goal.Belgium manager Roberto Martinez was delighted with the performance, while Panamas manager Hernan Gomezbelieves they lost with dignity.
Martinez said "we started very well but then became frustrated as the first half wore on. But I was delighted in the way the team reacted and the commitment everyone showed to keep a clean sheet." But the second half, Martinez added, Belgium found "found our composure and the goal from Dries Mertens, a great goal, was so important for us." Gomez said, "I think we have learned a lot from today's game. It was a very emotional day. This is the fifth time I've been at a World Cup but it felt like thefirst.
The team was still very emotional at the start of the match but as time went by, they were able to focus better." Today's third game featured Sweden's 1-0 victory against South Korea. Sweden's captain Andreas Granqvist scores the winning goal from the penalty spot after confirmation by the VAR team on the 65th minutes, to snatch the three points for his national team.
The Korean team struggled to find a breakthrough against a stubborn Swedish defence, and an excellent performance by the goalkeeper Jo Hyeonwoo who despite a goal put in the back of his net, was able to savehis team from much more. Sweden's manager Janne Andersson said after the matchthe team succeeded in organizing themselves and playing more physical following the 10-minute mark.
Korean team manager Taeyong Shin said they made some adjustments in the second half to concentrate on speed and managed to find opportunities, but Sweden are one of the tallest. "They are able to take advantage of this and their physical condition."
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