England Nearly Out-Klaased as Wales Say Emotional Farewell

With an extra day in the calender year this year, there was an extra international football friendly fixture for the world to enjoy. Stuart Pearce's start as interim England manager began at Wembley against the Netherlands. The first half was a very tight affair with both teams creating opportunities, the closest came from Arjen Robben whose shot was smartly saved by Joe Hart.

There was a half-time substitute apiece as James Milner replaced Gareth Barry and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar came on for Robin Van Persie. This would be a potential game changer as Robben picked the ball up in his own half and made his way to the England goal. Huntelaar pulled Chris Smalling out of position with a diagonal run, this left space for Robben to run into before smashing a shot into the bottom corner 12-minutes into the second half. Before England knew what had hit them, they went 2-0 down when Dirk Kuyt's cross was headed in by Huntelaar a minute later. Unfortunately during the header, Huntelaar and Smalling had a clash of heads in which both players remained on the floor. Neither player could continue and Smalling had to be stretchered off.

This stoppage arguably killed Holland's momentum and the game became a little dull. The last time these two met, Holland took a 2-0 lead before Jermaine Defoe scored a brace to earn a draw. This time Gary Cahill found himself in the box in open play, Leighton Baines played the ball into him and the Chelsea man turned before shooting exquisitely to pull a goal back with five minutes left. With four minutes of injury time to be played, Phil Jones played a killer pass into the path of Ashley Young who slotted his fourth goal in five international appearances to seemingly give England a draw. But Holland went straight up the other end and poor marking allowed Robben to take a shot that deflected off Cahill before out-foxing Hart and giving the Dutch the win.

But across the border, football came second as the heroes of Welsh football all gathered together for the Gary Speed memorial. Cardiff's Ninian Park put on a fantastic pre-game show with many bands paying their tributes to the late Welsh manager. Costa Rica were Wales' opponents for Chris Coleman's first game in charge, the nation Speed played his Wales debut against. With the sombre atmosphere and the likes of Gareth Bale, James Collins and Aaron Ramsey missing from the squad, it was understandable why Wales may not have been fully up for it. The script was tore up on just seven minutes when Arsenal's Joel Campbell scored for the visitors. Wales tried their hardest to get back into it with Steve Morison coming closest but his first half header hit the bar. Unfortunately, it wasn't the result that Gary Speed deserved but the tributes and memorial service bids a fantastic farewell to a fantastic player and would-be manager who left us far too early.