Germany dismiss Georgia
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ByEurosport
Published 07/10/2006 at 22:16 GMT
Two long-range goals gave a 10-man Germany the 2-0 win over Georgia in a friendly international on Saturday. Bastian Schweinsteiger slammed home a shot from 25 metres in the 24th minutes - having been set up captain Michael Ballack - to give Germany the lead.
FOOTBALL Germany Nationalteam
Image credit: dpa
A vicious kick against Georgia defender Zurab Khizanishvili resulted in Lukas Podolski being sent off early in the second half.
But just 15 minutes later Georgia were also reduced to 10-men as Austrain referee Gerald Lehner dismissed Khizanishvili for a second bookable offence.
Schweinsteiger then returned the favour for Ballack, finding his captain open on the left for a 22-metre blast to double their lead.
More often than not Germany looked comfortable but struggled in defence at times and were lucky that Georgia had two goals disallowed for offside.
"It was an entertaining match but we naturally made a number of mistakes," said Loew, who fielded two young newcomers in his team - Piotr Trochowski of Hamburg SV and Werder Bremen's Clemens Fritz - and a total of seven second-string players.
Loew rested regulars Miroslav Klose, Philipp Lahm, Bernd Schneider, Torsten Frings and goalkeeper Jens Lehmann for the Slovakia match while defenders Per Mertesacker and Christoph Metzelder were left out of the squad due to injuries.
"We had to integrate a lot of younger players going into their first match and had some problems in coordination," Loew added.
"We wanted to give some people a chance to show what they can do. We were a bit lucky that we kept a clean sheet."
After Schweinsteiger's goal, Germany shifted down a gear and were lucky that Otar Martsvaladze's header from a free kick in first-half stoppage time was disallowed in a close offside call.
Germany came back to life only after Podolski was sent off.
"I think we played well against a very good Germany team," said Georgia's German coach Klaus Toppmoeller.
"We're moving in the right direction. We wanted to show we can compete with the best teams and I think we accomplished that."
BRAZIL COMFORTABLE
Brazil strolled to a 4-0 win over a Kuwait Select team in a friendly match played in Kuwait on Saturday.
Rafael Sobis, Robinho, Daniel Carvalho and Kaka scored for the South Americans in what appeared to be little more than a good-natured kickabout in front of a 20,000 crowd.
Brazil - who scored twice in each half - fielded a mainly experimental team which also featured Ronaldinho, Robinho and Kaka, who came on as a second-half substitute.
The match caused confusion in the Brazilian media, with some describing the opposition as the Kuwait national team and the others as a Kuwait combination.
The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) described the opposition as Kuwait on their Web site.
The match was originally due to be played last November but was postponed when the European clubs refused to release their players on the grounds that the game was not a full international.
Brazil have often been criticised in the past for playing too many friendlies against lightweight opposition.
Their last two warm-up games before the World Cup were New Zealand and a Swiss select side based on second division FC Lucerne.
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