London: With 100 days until this year's European Championship kicks off, Spain, France and the Netherlands continued their preparations with impressive friendly wins Wednesday.
Roberto Soldado scored a hat-trick to lead defending European champion Spain to a 5-0 win over Venezuela in Malaga, and France extended their unbeaten run to 18 matches with Oliver Giroud and Florent Malouda scoring for a 2-1 win over Germany in Bremen.
The Netherlands, European champion in 1988 and a three-time World Cup runner-up, withstood a spirited comeback by a makeshift England team to win 3-2 at Wembley, while Italy lost an unbeaten record in Genoa stretching back to 1924 when it lost 1-0 to the United States.
Few coaches will place too much importance upon the result of friendly matches played under relatively little pressure compared to the June 8-July 1 tournament in Poland and Ukraine, with Germany's Joachim Loew among those to say beforehand he was more concerned with tweaking details and spending time with his players....
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09:02 AM, Mar 01, 2012
Kolkata: The Indian football team will play two international friendlies in Oman and Azerbaijan later this month in the run-up to the AFC Challenge Cup in Kathmandu. India will take on Oman in Muscat on February 23 before flying to Dubai for the game against Azerbaijan on February 27, an All India Football Federation release said on Friday. Both Oman and Azerbaijan are ranked higher than India in the FIFA...
03:57 PM, Feb 03, 2012
Beijing: A veteran Chinese referee has admitted in court to taking bribes to fix local and international matches, including making sure a local team won the toss in a friendly involving Manchester United, state media has reported. The case of Huang Junjie, a referee for more than 20 years who has been nominated as one of the country's best, is one of a number of hearings underway following a probe...
12:57 PM, Dec 23, 2011
New Delhi: Indian senior football team will play two international friendly matches against Malaysia next month in the run up to the South Asian Football Federation Cup to be held here in December. The international friendlies will be held on November 13 at Indira Gandhi Athletics Stadium at Sarusajai, Guwahati and on November 16 at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata. "The All India Football Federation is pleased to confirm two...
06:53 PM, Oct 10, 2011
Brazil, Portugal, France, Argentina, England and Spain all will feature in the international friendlies in the next 2 days. ...
08:21 PM, Feb 06, 2007
