Skipper Mark Viduka gave Australia a new injury scare three days out from their World Cup opener with Japan when he sat out team training with a calf muscle complaint.
The experienced Middlesbrough striker, who is the focal point of Australia’s attack, strained his right calf during the warm-up and went off for treatment with a team physiotherapist.
Paraguay striker Roque Santa Cruz has cut short a training session ahead of Saturday’s Group B opener with England after feeling pain in the left knee he recently had surgery on.
South Korean coach Dick Advocaat says that attacking will-o-the-wisp Park Ji-Sung was peaking at the right time and was eager to make a big impact in his second World Cup.
Advocaat said he can deploy Park as a midfielder or a winger depending on whether the 2002 World Cup semi-finalists are playing a 4-3-3 formation or 3-4-3.
When Tunisian goalkeeper Ali Boumnijel made his international debut in 1991, the youngest player at this World Cup, England’s Theo Walcott, was just two years old.
Boumnijel will become the oldest player to appear at a World Cup finals when he takes to the field on June 14 against Saudi Arabia.
The curtain lifts on the 18th World Cup finals with Germany hoping that they can put on a show worthy of the opening ceremony and the fireworks don’t end in a damp squib with defeat at the hands of Costa Rica.
Bookmakers, bars and restaurants across football-mad Asia are preparing for a bonanza month as hundreds of millions of fans count down the hours to the World Cup kick-off on Friday.
From Dhaka to Seoul giant screens were erected in public squares, bars decked out with flags of the 32 competing nations, and TV stations predicted accumulated viewer numbers of well over 10 billion during the month-long event.
Costa Rica may only ever have reached the second round of the World Cup once and are playing in the finals for only the third time.
Yet the 350-1 shots, who exited at the group stage in 2002 but made the last 16 in 1990, are confident they can cause a major upset and beat hosts Germany in Friday’s tournament opener.
Paraguay were hard at work honing their air defence system against England’s expected bombardment led by the giant Peter Crouch in Saturday’s Group B opener in Frankfurt.
After featuring as a figure attracting some derision at the start of his England career Crouch has spread a little fear into the South Americans with last week’s hat-trick in a 6-0 friendly win over Jamaica.
Iranian playmaker Mehdi Mahdavikia said he was hopeful of playing in his team’s World Cup Group D opener against Mexico after accelerating his recovery from a back injury.
The FC Hamburg midfielder made a big step-up in his training, warming up with some solo shooting practice before taking part in a 15-minute practice game.
England are oozing with confidence after an encouraging run of results leading up to the World Cup, and no-one is more so than Chelsea captain John Terry.
The 25-year-old has made remarkable progress under Jose Mourinho, marshalling a stingy Chelsea back-line and skippering the Blues to two Premiership titles while moulding himself into one of the world’s most respected defenders.
