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England and Portugal both struggled to victory over lowly opponents today in their first qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup.
While the big teams of Spain, Germany, France and Italy were set to play their opening matches in European qualifying later in the day, England beat Andorra 2-0 through two goals from substitute Joe Cole.
But the English were jeered by their own fans during a poor first-half performance and took until the 49th minute to score against opponents ranked No.186 in the world.
Portugal did better with a 4-0 win at Malta, but that came only after it added three goals in the last 29 minutes after clinging to a first-half own goal for much of the match.
Sweden slipped behind Portugal in the race for one of the World Cup places available to the winners of Europe’s nine qualifying groups after a disappointing 0-0 draw at Group 1 rival Albania, but Greece took early charge of Group 2 with an easy 3-0 win at Luxembourg.
England struggled in a Group 6 match that was supposed to be a straightforward warmup for Wednesday’s game at Croatia.
“I know it’s a cliche, but they put 10 men behind the ball,” Cole said.
“We didn’t move the ball as well as we’d like to have done. The confidence of the team was a bit low.”
Croatia, who beat England home and away to qualify for this year’s European Championship instead of its opponent, beat Kazakhstan 2-0 in its opening match through goals by Niko Kovac, Luka Modric and Mladen Petric.
In the same group, Ukraine scraped to a 1-0 win over visiting Belarus with a 90th-minute penalty from Andriy Shevchenko.
Hungary held visiting Denmark to a 0-0 draw in Group 1 and Sweden, who are expected to be Portugal’s closest challenger for top spot, struggled at Albania despite the best efforts of star striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Latvia won 2-1 at Moldova and Israel rallied from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with visiting Switzerland.
Spain were set to play their first competitive match since winning the European Championship in June when they hosted Bosnia in Group 5 later today.
Belgium was up against Estonia in the same group, while Turkey won 2-0 at lowly Armenia with second-half goals from Tuncay Sanli and Semih Senturk.
France were at Austria in Group 7, while Italy were to face Cyprus in Group 8.
Euro 2008 runner-up Germany were at Liechtenstein in Group 4, which Wales opened by beating Azerbaijan 1-0.
The Netherlands were in friendly action against Australia but Scotland missed a valuable opportunity to put early pressure on the Group 9 favourites when they lost 1-0 at Macedonia.
Iceland twice rallied to draw 2-2 at Norway in the same group.
In Group 3, Slovakia beat Northern Ireland 2-1 and Poland drew 1-1 with Slovenia.
Montenegro were denied victory in their first ever World Cup qualifier when Bulgaria substitute Blagoi Georgiev scored in the final minute to earn his team a 2-2 draw, while Ireland won 2-1 at Georgia in their opening Group 9 match.
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