Fabio Capello won his first game as England’s coach as Shaun Wright-Phillips scored in the 62nd minute to give England a 2-1 win over Switzerland in a friendly. Jermaine Jenas also scored for England in the victory. "I must say that we were quite nervous at the start, worried," Capello said. "We probably have still at the back of our minds our failure to qualify for Euro 2008 and Wembley always generates pressure on the players and they couldn't play as they wished to at first. But then we created a lot of goal scoring chances.” A crowd of 86,857 was on hand to watch England get the win.
Germany won 3-0 at Austria in another friendly while Italy beat Portugal 3-1. The Netherlands routed Croatia 3-0 on goals by Johnny Heitinga, Klaus-Jan Huntelaar and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. "This gives us a lot of confidence going toward the Soccer Betting European Championship," Netherlands midfielder Wesley Sneijder said. Defending European champion Greece also won, beating Finland 2-1, while Poland surprised the Czech Republic 2-0 and Spain beat France 1-0. Other results had Israel winning 1-0 over Romania and Sweden and Turkey playing to a scoreless draw.
Germany got goals from Thomas Hitzlsperger, Miroslav Klose and substitute Mario Gomez. Klose scored off a pass by captain Michael Ballack. "This result does not reflect the match properly. We could have been at least 1-0 down after the first half," Germany coach Joachim Loew said. "We had too many mistakes in every department of the game and I can't be satisfied with that."
Poland upset the Czechs on first-half goals by Wojciech Lobodzinski and Mariusz Lewandowski. The Netherlands routed Croatia in their game even without Ruud van Nistelrooy, Arjen Robben, Robin van Persie and Clarence Seedorf. "I think people will take notice of this," Netherlands coach Marco Van Basten said. "Winning 3-0 away with a number of replacements is very satisfying … we're very happy."
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World Cup champion Italy beat 2004 runner-up Portugal in Geneva, getting goals from Luca Toni, Andrea Pirlo and Fabio Quagliarella. Luca Toni opened the scoring late in the first half and Andrea Pirlo made it 2-0 shortly after the second half began. Ricardo Quaresma scored to cut the lead in half but Fabio Quagliarella made it 3-1 two minutes later to put the game away. Italy looks like one of the favorites for Euro 2008. In the win against Portugal they played without World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon but Marco Amelia played well and made some nice saves against Cristiano Ronaldo.
Spain was able to get a 1-0 win against France on an 80th minute goal from Joan Capdevila. The big news out of this game was the injury to Liverpool striker Fernando Torres who was forced out with what appeared to be a hamstring injury. Torres is key to Liverpool’s chances in the Premier League. He is their leading scorer with 18 goals in all competitions. France nearly tied the game but Thierry Henry was denied as he had a shot tipped around the post in the final minute.
A couple of other matches had five-time World Cup champion Brazil winning at Ireland 1-0 as Robinho scored. Wales beat Norway 3-0 with Jason Koumas scoring twice, and Bulgaria won at Northern Ireland 1-0.
Wales boss John Toshack was very happy with the play of Koumas “When Jason is in the mood, you can see what he is capable of. He has such ability on the ball and he has got to understand how important he now is to my squad. The problem is getting him out on the pitch, he misses so many games including all of our away Euro 2008 qualifiers. But we will keep plugging away, we need him playing like that.” Toshack said. Wales has lost only two of their last 11 games and could be peaking at the right time.
“It is pleasing to see the way we are progressing, but there is still a long way to go before we play our World Cup qualifiers, starting in September, Toshack said, “It has been a good couple of days with the under-21s winning 4-0 in Malta. We had eight players involved against Norway who could have been in that squad, so there are plenty of good young prospects starting to make a name for themselves.”
Late matches on Wednesday had the U.S. facing Mexico, Jamaica playing Costa Rica and Guatemala taking on Argentina.
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