Sports

France, Italy romp; Spain draw with Portugal, Dutch lose

Sports Desk, Oct 7 (efe-epa).- Wednesday’s feast of friendlies featured a scoreless draw between Spain and Portugal, lopsided victories for France and Italy and a defeat for the Netherlands in their first outing under new coach Frank de Boer.

The marquee contest was in Lisbon, where 2,500 watched the reigning European champions host the side that won the Euro Cup in 2008 and 2016.

While La Roja captain Sergio Ramos and budding star Ansu Fati were left out of the starting 11, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo played 73 minutes before giving way to Joao Felix.

Kepa Arrizabalaga, who started in goal instead of David De Gea, got help from the cross-bar to deny Cristiano and Renato Sanches, while Rui Patricio saved a shot by Dani Olmo at the other end.

Les Bleus pounded Ukraine 7-1. France took the lead in the 9th minute on 17-year-old Eduardo Camavinga’s first international goal and were up 4-0 at half-time after Olivier Giroud’s brace and an own goal by Vitaliy Mykolenko.

Corentin Tolisso added a fifth goal in the 65th minute before subs Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann scored one apiece for the squad they led to triumph in the 2018 World Cup.

Italy, whose last loss was two years ago, rolled 6-0 over humble Moldova to post their 12th win in 13 matches. Bryan Cristante started the scoring, followed by Francesco Caputo – who also instigated a Moldovan own goal – and Stephan El Shaaraway had a double.

Domenico Berardi made it 6-0 in the 72nd minute.

The Dutch side fell 1-0 to Mexico in the first match since De Boer succeeded Ronald Koeman, who left for Barcelona after presiding over a turnaround, guiding a squad that failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup to a second-place finish in the inaugural UEFA Nations League.

The winning goal came from Raul Jimenez.

Germany led on three separate occasions Wednesday over Turkey, yet the matched ended 3-3, the third successive draw for Die Mannschaft.

Julian Draxler, Florian Neuhaus and Luca Waldschmidt scored for Germany. Turkey got their goals from Ozan Tufan, Efecan Karaca and Kenan Karaman, who equalized in the 94th minute.

Switzerland took the lead against Croatia with a goal by Mario Gavranovic, but conceded in the second half to Josip Brekalo and Mario Pasalic to lose 2-1. It the first victory of 2020 for the 2018 World Cup runners-up.

Poland, meanwhile, routed Finland 5-1, proving that they can put up points without Robert Lewandowski, who has goals in 30 of his last 31 appearances for the national side. EFE

id/dr

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