Germany see off Malta

Joachim Loew's side began their preparations for the World Cup with a comfortable 3-0 win at Aachen's Tivoli Stadion


Cacau was on target twice for the three-times world champions with an own goal from Kenneth Scicluna completing the scoring.

But Germany missed a hatful of chances to seal a more emphatic victory in front of a sell-out crowd of 26,000 who at least ensured a sizeable sum will be donated to the German Football Association's charitable organisations after this benefit match.

Despite having much of his provisional World Cup squad unavailable, Germany coach Loew was still able to name a strong team which included Arne Friedrich as captain and Lukas Podolski and Cacau leading their attack.

Manuel Neuer was named as goalkeeper, indicating that he could well have won the battle to be the new number one following Rene Adler's injury-enforced absence.

Germany started the game brightly with Toni Kroos appearing keen to take his chance to impress as the team's playmaker.

Cacau put the dominant home side in front in the 16th minute with debutant Dennis Aogo providing the cross from the left wing for the Stuttgart striker to head in from 10 yards out.

Despite their dominance, Germany were unable to add to Cacau's goal and they risked conceding an equaliser after half an hour, but Neuer made his first serious intervention to deny Roderick Briffa.

Stefan Kiessling's goal 10 minutes before the break was ruled out for offside, leaving Loew's side with a rather disappointing solitary goal to show for the first 45 minutes.

It took them almost a quarter of an hour in the second half to double their lead through Cacau.

Another debutant, Kevin Grosskreutz, was involved in the build-up with his pass being knocked on by Podolski to Cacau, who placed his shot past Justin Haber.

Three minutes later, the ball was in the back of the net again with Podolski's cross put past his own goalkeeper by Scicluna.

Kiessling could not believe his luck in the final few minutes as he missed three quick-fire chances to add a fourth while a deflected cross from Piotr Trochowski hit the crossbar as Germany had to settle for only a 3-0 win in Aachen.


source:wc2010