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Zico pleased with Japan despite late lapses
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-05-31 14:30

LEVERKUSEN, Germany, May 31 - Japan gave coach Zico plenty to smile about with a classy performance in a World Cup warm-up match against Germany on Tuesday, drawing 2-2 after conceding two late goals.

Zico was pleased with his team's creativity and effort even though lapses of concentration on two set pieces allowed the tournament hosts to salvage a draw.

"I'm satisfied with the way with played, both the creativity and the fight we showed," said Zico, whose squad is based about 40 km up the Rhine river in Bonn.

"The concentration was good. I'm quite content with the way things went ahead of the tournament. We had a lot of scoring chances even though should have scored more goals," he added.

Naohiro Takahara, well known to Germans as a Hamburg SV striker, and Atsushi Yanagisawa were constant sources of trouble for Germany's defence with goalkeeper Jens Lehmann forced into several fine saves.

Takahara finally broke through twice to the delight of the large contingent of Japanese supporters, many of whom live in the nearby city of Duesseldorf.

That was twice as many goals as Takahara scored for Hamburg last season and Zico had no explanation for his forward's strong performances for Japan.

"Takahara has to answer that question himself," said Zico of the striker who recently joined Eintracht Frankfurt.

The Brazilian coach cautioned against reading too much into the match but was nevertheless encouraged.

"At the moment there are not so many really, really strong teams in the world," he said. "Germany is a country with a great tradition and against Germany we were ahead 2-0. That was very good.

"Yet we could have won but didn't. We have to work on that."