German polka

Klose and Podolski showed the Poles how to beat Ecuador

4. Saudi Arabia

The teams playing in Group A have completed the first stage of the World Championship. Germany tried to prove that it was fully prepared for the upcoming playoff matches, and Poland apologized to its fans by winning against Costa Rica.

The Ecuador-Germany match will probably be studied in detail by the head coaches of the England and Sweden national teams, who finished their face-to-face meeting late last night. But after watching, the Ecuadorians, who fielded a semi-reserve squad, will remain a mystery to them, while the Germans will be quite puzzling. Mainly, the future rivals of the German national team will have to rack their brains over how to contain Miroslav Klose, who is in very good shape. The hosts' forward scored two goals in the match with Ecuador and made one assist for Podolski.

It is noteworthy that both Germany strikers Klose and Podolski were born in Poland. However, the Poles are unlikely to be consoled by the successes of their former compatriots in the German squad. But perhaps, after Poland’s victory over Costa Rica, the fans of Pavel Janas’ team will not go home in such a gloomy mood.

True, at first things didn’t work out very well for the Poles with Costa Rica. Having conceded in the middle of the first half, the Europeans risked defeat in their third match, becoming the worst team in the championship. But everything worked out. Having equalized the score after the goalkeeper's mistake when taking a corner, the Poles took the lead after the break (both goals were scored by defender Bosyatsky) and brought the match to victory.

And the day before, the Spanish team, having beaten the Tunisian team - 3:1, somewhat helped the Ukrainians in the fight for reaching the 1/8 finals of the tournament. Now, in the last match with the Africans, Oleg Blokhin’s team will be quite satisfied with a draw. After all, the chances of Saudi Arabia beating the Spaniards with a big score are close to zero, and if the points are equal, the Ukrainians will be higher than the Arabians due to the difference in goals scored and goals conceded.

But even a draw with Tunisia is not an easy task. Spain also needed to make every effort to beat the Africans. Having conceded in the eighth minute, Aragones' team stormed the opponent's goal for almost an hour to no avail. And only Raul, having successfully played the finishing move, was able to even the score. Having scored, the Spaniards got rid of the psychological pressure and first took the lead, and then finished off the Tunisian team. Both goals were scored by Fernando Torres, and he topped the list of scorers for the day with three goals. True, Torres most likely will not be able to score in the third round - Aragones intends to save his forward for the decisive matches.

But the Tunisian team, naturally, does not intend to take care of itself in the last match. “As long as we have chances, we will fight,” said Tunisian head coach Roger Lemerre, who was celebrating his 65th birthday. - Ukraine is a strong team, but we still have hope. Nothing has been lost yet."

Also, the Ukrainian national team has not won anything yet. “Tunisia, our last opponent in the group, has an excellent coach, and his team is very strong, it includes players from European clubs,” the head coach of the Ukrainian national team Oleg Blokhin was cautious in assessing his opponent.

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Match results. Group "N". Spain - Tunisia - 3:1 (Raul 71, Torres 76, 90 pen. - Mnari 8) . Group "A". Germany - Ecuador - 3:0 ( Klose 4, 44, Podolski 57), Poland - Costa Rica - 2:1 (Bosiatsky 33, 66 - Gomez 24) .

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Group "H" I V N P M O

Group "A" I V N P M O

Andrey VDOVIN