South Korea 1 - England 1 
Park, 51 Owen, 25 




International Friendly Match
Tuesday 21st May, 7pm Kick Off (11am BST)
Jeju World Cup Stadium, Seogwipo, Korea

Just as will be the case in every match in Japan, England faced a team full of pride and determination this evening and the World Cup hosts, for whom this was an occasion of quite some magnitude, richly deserved the draw that they celebrated like a victory on the final whistle.

England's performance was by no means poor - we played some entertaining football and wowed the crowd with some long passes and close skill - but Sven may feel that we should have dominated the game to a greater extent than we managed.

However, the priority in this game was preparation and the fact that the manager was able to field every fit player available to him at this time, means that it was a worthwhile exercise.

Sven named a strong starting XI and England looked the more dangerous side in the first half.

The breakthrough came on 25 minutes and there are no prizes for guessing who provided it. Just as he had done against Paraguay at Anfield, Michael Owen responded to what he describes as the "huge honour" of captaining his country by opening the goalscoring.

It was his astute forward header from the edge of the area which had initially found Heskey in a yard of space on the left hand apex of the box. The Liverpool man produced a deft pass to let in Scholes who was on one of his trademark forages from the midfield. His left-foot shot was well saved by Woon Jae Lee but, as the ball trickled across the six-yard box, Michael was there in a flash to slide the ball home with a mixture of boot and knee.

England's 4-3-3 formation seemed to suit Eriksson's men, with the banks of three in midfield and attack offering another level of fluidity to our game.

In the knowledge that the highly impressive Hargreaves was there to mop up the defensive duties, Scholes was able to advance forward in the way that best suits his game and having two fellow partners in crime up front to occupy the opposition defence made Owen even more dangerous than unusual.

The potential weakness of the system might be a lack of attacking width but the regularity with which both Cole and Mills surged down the flanks suggested that Mr Eriksson had specifically invited them to fill that void.

4-4-2 may yet remain Sven's first choice formation but he now has what he wanted: "something else up my sleeve" as he and England head towards the World Cup.

The two men who will have had most to gain from this match were Owen Hargreaves and Danny Murphy. With Nicky Butt currently out of action and Steven Gerrard back home in England, Hargreaves was the obvious choice to provide the shield in front of the defence. He did so admirably. His pace and high energy game were the perfect foil for Scholes and Murphy and may well have tempted Sven to ask him to repeat the dose against Sweden in eleven days. The word from inside the camp is that recent tests have shown the Bayern Munich man to be the fittest member of Sven's squad and he looked every inch a European Cup winner this evening.

Though he only had 45 minutes to make an impression, Danny Murphy was equally impressive. He is one of the Premier League's most mentally alert players and looked entirely at home in the centre of England's midfield. His volley from the edge of the area on 22 minutes showed immaculate technique, while his quickly taken free-kick to release Danny Mills for a good chance on the half an hour exemplified his quickness of thought.

This was never an entirely comfortable match for England and the goal for which the whole of Korea had been yearning arrived after 51 minutes. It came courtesy of what might be called an old-fashioned England set piece. A corner was flicked on at the near post and Ji Sung Park dived to head home in flamboyant style.

Before the game, the fans were keen to tell every Englishman that this was the biggest game that Jeju has ever hosted and the roars that reverberated around this immaculate stadium every time David Beckham was captured on the big screen told you everything you needed to know about the profile of the England team here.

It was clear how much Park's goal meant to the player, his team, and the country and, on their lively and fearless performance, you could not begrudge Hiddink's team a share of the spoils.

"Congratulations to Korea," Sven said after the game. "They played some good football, especially in the second half."

The brightest note of an otherwise disappointing second forty five minutes for England was the wizardry of Joe Cole. He still does not affect the game in the way his outrageous talent suggests he might, but any football fan watching his twinkle toes concoct their spell cannot help by be bewitched by the young Hammer.

However, while aesthetics may be acceptable on this occasion, it is the results which will matter in eleven days time.

From Daniel Freedman in Jeju.

Starting line-ups;

South Korea

England

Woon-Jae Lee

Nigel Martyn (David James, 45)

Song

Danny Mills (Wes Brown, 68)

Hong

Sol Campbell (Gareth Southgate, 45)

Jin-Cheul Choi

Rio Ferdinand (Martin Keown, 45)

Nam-Il Kim

Ashley Cole (Wayne Bridge, 45)

Tae-Uk Choi

Danny Murphy (Joe Cole, 45)

Yong-Pyo Lee

Owen Hargreaves

Yoo

Paul Scholes (Trevor Sinclair, 45)

Park

Emile Heskey

Seol

Michael Owen (c) (Teddy Sheringham, 45)

Chun-Soo Lee

Darius Vassell