A 3-2 defeat at home to Croatia sealed England’s fait as they failed to qualify for Euro 2008. Few would have predicted that England would have failed to qualify for the competition after being given top seeding in their qualification group.
Here are five pivotal matches where England failed to produce what was required of them and ultimately lead to their failure.

England 0 – 0 F.Y.R. Macedonia

England at home threw away two vital points for the second consecutive home qualifying match against Macedonia. Despite Macedonia’s minnow status, they did give England a few scares. Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and substitute Shaun Wight Phillips all coming close to opening the scoring, unfortunately for the home side the best chance of the evening fell to right back Gary Neville who blazed over the bar with the goal gaping open following Nikolovski’s fine save from a Crouch header.
It could have been worse when Macedonia came close to scoring themselves in the last 10 minutes when Nikolce Noveski rounded Paul Robinson but saw his effort hacked away by Ashley Cole.

Croatia 2 - 0 England

England were wary of what a difficult game this could be and reacted in an unsual manor by changing to an unfamiliar 3-5-2 formation. Throughout the evening the defensive trio of Jamie Carragher, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry did not look comfortable and on the hour striker Eduardo da Silva put the home side in the lead with a fine header.
Things would get worse for the visitors when Gary Neville’s back pass rolled passed Paul Robinson after the goalkeeper had inexplicably missed his kick. With Croatia 2-0 up England were shell shocked and played the rest of the game in what could only be described as a carnival atmosphere.

Russia 2 - 1 England

There was much hype about this game in the pre match build up, the weather conditions and the pitch all seemed to conspire against Steve McClarens side. Despite all the hype, Wayne Rooney fired home on the half hour mark to give England a half time lead.
In the second half Steven Gerrard squandered a superb chance to put his side 2-0 in front before the game was turned on it’s head. Spartak Moscow striker Roman Pavlyuchenko came of the bench and scored two goals in four minutes. The first a penalty after Wayne Rooney was judged to have tripped Zyrianov just inside the box, he then converted a rebound after Paul Robinson could only parry Arshavin’s shot.
Manager Steve McClaren came under fire in this match with his decision play Jolean Lescott at left back, despite having Phil Neville and Nicky Shorey in the squad who are both more experienced in the role. Jolean Lescott looked uncomfortable all evening and to make matters worse, Rio Ferdinand was booked meaning he would miss the final qualifying match.

Austria 0 – 1 England

In a very controversial friendly fixture, England turned out and gave a solid if not spectacular and certainly not impressive performance. McClaren argued that it would be good for the players to get some extra match practise together, but many felt this was a game the squad could do without playing.
One of those players was Newcastle striker Michael Owen. With Wayne Rooney already injured, England needed to keep their key goal scorer fit. Owen had been struggling all season with injuries and again limped off the field and was immediately ruled out of the crunch match against Croatia.

England 2 – 3 Croatia

After Russia’s last minute defeat in Israel, England now only needed to earn a draw against Croatia to secure a place in Euro 2008. The build up to the match was unusual, with first choice goalkeeper Paul Robinson dropped from the team and substitutes bench following what was described as an error ridden training session. David Beckham was also dropped to the substitutes’ bench in favour of Shaun Wright Phillips in a 4-5-1 formation.
That looked to have been a bad decision when Scott Carson made a terrible error and let Nico Kranjcar’s long range effort past him before Ivica Olic made it 2-0 with 14 minutes gone.
England were handed a life line when they were awarded a soft penalty that Frank Lampard converted, before Peter Crouch fired home David Beckham’s superb cross.
With England back in qualification, they only needed to hold on but Croatian substitute Mladen Petric’s left footed shot found the corner of the net to put the Croats back in front with 13 minutes to go.
Darren Bent saw his effort clip the cross bar, but England failed to work a decent opening to equalise.

What now for English football? Many will call for a change of Coach at the expense of Steve McClaren. There may also be a few members of the squad announcing their retirement from International football ahead of the World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign.