Beckham's early penalty, Owen's header soon after half-time and Lampard's fantastically-struck thunderbolt earned the victory, with Ivica Mornar replying for the visitors.

Though England impressed, Croatia posed plenty of problems for Sven's men ahead of their Euro 2004 qualifying double header against Macedonia and Liechtenstein, and James put in another assured performance.

And the West Ham goalkeeper was understandably pleased with his match: "Croatia are a decent side and they had opportunities to punish us.

"They kept us on our toes and stuff from today will be used in the build up to the qualifiers.

"You'd like to not have anything to do and win five or six-nil but international football's not like that.

"It was a good run-out for us ahead of the qualifiers.

"I think they're quite into their season and it's effectively pre-season for a lot of our players, most of them have only had one competitive match."

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