Germany's Manager Joachim Low is serving his one match ban today against Portugal, so assistant coach Hans-Dieter Flick filled in for him. The starting line-up had Simon Rolfes, 26, who took the 31-year-old Torsten Frings' position because the Werder Bremen man was unable to recovery from an injury fast enough. Bastian Schweinsteiger came back from his suspension to replace Clemens Fritz, 27, and Mario Gomez was replaced by Lukas Podolski, a much more proficient finisher.

The match started very nervously in the midfield with both teams cautious in their attacks, until the 10th minute of the match as Germany had the only good scoring chance with midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger, 26, had his low drive from distance hit the side-netting.

In the 14th minute, Portuguese midfielder Deco, 30, released Simao with a lovely ball to be sent in on goal, but the Atletico Madrid striker had his shot denied by the big presence of goalkeeper Jens Lehmann who covered the near-post well.

Cristiano Ronaldo timed his diagonal run in the area but could not latch on to the ball because of defender Arne Friedrich delightful sliding interceptive tackle.

An the other end of the pitch, midfielder and German captain Michael Ballack rose above defender Pepe high enough to head the corner-kick well over the cross-bar.

Portugal's first real chance came in the 20th minute, when defender Bosingwa bombed down the right sending in a splendid curving cross in an inviting close-range with central-midfielder Joao Moutinho, 22, timing his run to perfection. Unfortunately, the Sporting Lisbon prodigy's knee miss was anything but close to perfect from six-yards.

With Portugal missing the chance to get the vital first-goal, two-minutes after the Germans got the opening goal. Lukas Podolski who is usually on the tail end of things to finish the German attack was now playing the role as provider. The Polish-born striker with a one-two linking play with Ballack on the left, Podolski squared the ball to his Bayern Munich team-mate Schweinsteiger who steered the ball behind goalkeeper Ricardo.

Four-minutes, the Germans score there second goal was well-executed a fabulous free-kick by Schweinsteiger's swinging ball found the unwatched Klose; another member of Bayern contingents on Germany, thumping his header passed the Portuguese keeper.

Before the end of the half, the Portuguese brought the score within one. Deco was the architect in this play releasing Manchester United star one-on-one

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