Germany 4 - 2 Costa Rica

Germany 4 - Phillip Lahm (6 min)
- Miroslav Klose (17, 61 min)
- Torsten Frings (87 min)

Costa Rica 2 - Paulo Wanchope (12, 73 min)

Munich, June 9 - 66,000 packed like sardines in the Allianz Arena to catch it live, and millions of others caught it through the television worldwide. It generated more euros in sponsorship and revenue than your average bling-crazed rapper earns with records. In a world of George W. Bush's vocabulary, Tom Cruise appearing in Oprah, the Singapore Armed Forces and Jack Black movies, however, there was the niggling possibility that things might go wrong.

But the opening match of soccer's greatest event, give or take four years, lived up to the hype. It was an opener deserving of all the interest it was attracting.

In a fantastic display of attacking football and a Gigli-esque display of defending football from both sides, viewers everywhere were treated to 3 goals within the first 17 minutes of World Cup 2006 (minus the opening ceremony, of course).

Phillip Lahm opened the scoring for the hosts with a curling strike which went in off the far post, only to have Paulo Wanchope beat the offside trap 6 minutes later and coolly slot in the equaliser, with 3 German defenders barging down on him.



Pigs then flew, as Miroslav Klose scored Germany's second goal with his foot. A cross that appeared to be a cross between a cross and a shot by Bastien Schweinsteiger made its way across a sea of legs before finding its way to the well-positioned feet of the birthday boy (Miroslav Klose turns 28 on the 9th of June 2006). Pigs did a runway stutter but still managed to take off as 16 minutes into the second half, Klose tried to head in a cross by Lahm. Costa Rican 'keeper Jose Porras did well to block the header, but the follow-up shot by Klose (using his feet) was unstoppable.

Deja vu reared its metaphorical baseball bat and hit the Germans. A wonderful through ball and a well-timed run by Paulo Wanchope saw the Costa Rican skipper beat the offside trap and beat Lehmann the same way he did an hour ago.

Then came the last goal, the perfect icing on the cake. Frankly, I would like to see this cake people always talk about, but I would not be surprised if it were smashed into the faces of the Costa Ricans. The Germans topped their performance with an amazing strike by Thorsten Frings that curled into the top right corner of the post (from the shooter's perspective that is) - a shot that would not have looked out of place had it flew off Steven Gerrard's boots. Coming 3 minutes before time, it was a fitting finish to a match that was a flourish of open attacking play the kind of which would bring Hitler's corpse to life.



Man-of-the-match deservedly went to birthday boy Miroslav Klose, but the main point anybody reporting on the World Cup should bring up is that it wa s a fantastic way to kick off World Cup 2006.