what an opening match! germany needed to win, and win they did, beating costa rica 4-2. to their credit, costa rica did their best and their star striker wanchope was really quite good, and managed to beat the german defence twice. but the german team did well, with philip lahm and torsten frings scoring one goal each and miroslav klose scoring twice, just not with his head. heh. klinsmann should be happy i guess, but i was a little disappointed with jens lehmann's performance. both times he let the ball in he was one on one with wanchope, and he just froze. like, man, do something! the camera caught ollie smirking when lehmann let that second goal in. one thing for sure, lehmann doesn't have the reflexes that ollie has, even though he looks less bulky. hmm. all the other players were good, schneider especially, since he was taking over captaining duties from ballack. as the commentator drily noted, ballack was not missed at all in the match. schneider did well to set up klose for the second goal, and i was really impressed with frings' brilliant goal, which curled over the heads of astonished and dismayed costa ricans. but the defence certainly could have done better, and they should, if they want to advance to the finals.

oh but what a match. three goals in the first fifteen minutes of the match. well, if die nationalmannschaft doesn't make it past the quarters, then that's the end of my soccer for the year (many thanks again to channel five!!). might just watch the finals, but it won't be as exciting without deutschland. heh.