London - England marched into next summer's World Cup finals in South Africa with a thundering 5-1 win over Croatia at Wembley on Wednesday. Two years after they were denied a place in Euro 2008 by Slaven Bilic's team, England gained revenge in the most comprehensive fashion thanks to a commanding performance, taking them to eight wins out of eight in qualifying group six.
Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard both scored twice while Wayne Rooney finished off the scoring for Fabio Capello's side.
The Italian has transformed England's performances since taking over and the manager hailed the triumph as the best performance since he took over.
"We played quick, moved the ball and moved when we did not have the ball," Capello said.
"The first 20 minutes were fantastic and we were very compact. The performance tonight was very important and we did everything which we tried in training.
"Now we can talk about South Africa."
Arsenal striker Eduardo scored Croatia's only goal on 73 minutes but his side were already 4-0 up by that point.
After Ukraine's 0-0 draw in Belarus, England went into the match only needing a draw to secure their place in the finals.
From the kick-off, though, they were right on their game and within seven minutes they were ahead.
Aaron Lennon, preferred on the right side of midfield to David Beckham, cut inside and ran straight across the area, only to be hacked down by Josip Simunic, and Lampard scored from the penalty spot.
Five minutes later they doubled their lead after a sweet move started and finished by Gerrard.
The Liverpool captain found Lennon on the right with a lovely pass and the midfielder raced into the area to get on the end of the winger's cross and head the ball down and into the corner.
Croatia needed to do something special after going into the break 2-0 down but their hopes were ended when England scored a third on the hour mark.
Gerrard was again at the heart at the move, finding his Liverpool team-mate who mocked the defence with a series of stopovers before crossing for Lampard to head past Vedran Runje in the Croatia goal.
On 66 minutes, England were out of sight as Gerrard and Rooney combined nicely for the Liverpool man to hammer a head in for the fourth.
Eduardo salvaged some pride for Croatia when he fired in a second rebound after Dario Srna had seen his attempt well saved by Robert Green.
But Rooney then finished off a memorable night for England with the fifth 11 minutes from time, putting the ball into an empty net after a horribly mis-timed clearance from Runje.
Capello brought on Beckham for the last 10 minutes while Gerrard and Lennon received standing ovations for outstanding performances.
