Round-up of other friendlies

With less than a week to go before the start of the World Cup, teams are finalising their tactics, game plans and team selections by playing their final friendly matches. After this, any tinkering with the system will need to be done and perfected at the training grounds.

Most teams played or will be playing against opponents who play similar football to the other teams in the groups. Thus the game by England against Uruguay and Jamaica (so that they can gauge how Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago will play), and so too is the reason for Brazil to play New Zealand today- they will have one eye to size up the style of football played by Australia who they will meet on June 18.

Other friendlies for today will see the Dutch playing the Australians, Japan playing Malta and Korea playing Ghana.

Yesterday, we saw some exciting friendlies. The biggest win was for England who thrashed Jamaica 6-0. Other results include Switzerland beating China 4-1, Spain defeating Egypt 2-0, Portugal winning 3-0 over Luxembourg, Poland beating Croatia 1-0 and Czech Republic easily seeing off Trinidad and Tobago 3-0.

Czech Republic’s Jan Koller (pix), Switzerland’s Alexander Frei and England’s Peter Crouch all had dynamite in their boots for these friendlies for their respective teams.

Read a complete report on these friendlies here.