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 Four-goal Germany start with win
MUNICH, Germany -- Miroslav Klose scored twice for Germany on his 28th birthday as they opened the World Cup finals in Munich with a thrilling 4-2 victory over Costa Rica. Philipp Lahm gave Germany a sixth minute lead and Torsten Frings fired in a superb 30-yarder to complete the scoring three minutes from time. Paulo Wanchope scored the Costa Ricans' goals after 12 and 73 minutes. German coach Juergen Klinsmann omitted captain Michael Ballack even though the player had announced that he was fit to play. The team's doctors decided playing Ballack would be too risky, according to assistant coach Joachim Loew. "The danger of a tear is very, very high. We didn't want to take that risk. Ballack is too important for that. We need him in later matches," Loew said. Bernd Schneider took over the captaincy and Klinsmann named Tim Borowski to fill Ballack's central midfield position. Germany scored after six minutes when defender Lahm, after wrong-footing a defender, sent a magnificent shot from the edge of the box past keeper Jose Porras. The ball struck the far post and flew in. It was Lahm's second goal for his country but the first for two years. He had not scored for Bayern all season. The hosts could have scored a second four minutes later but Klose just missed tapping the ball into the goal and then Schneider's shot from inside the box flew over the bar. Frozen defenseBut it was Costa Rica who scored next when in the 12th minute Wanchope raced through a frozen German defense, who wrongly thought he was offside, to pick up a pass from Ronald Gomez and slide the ball past German keeper Jens Lehmann. It took the Germans only five minutes to regain the lead when Schneider, racing down the left flank, cut the ball back into the box to Bastian Schweinsteiger who passed to Klose for an close-range tap-in. The Polish-born striker then made it 3-1 when he fired into the roof of the net in the 61st minute after his header was parried by Porras. Wanchope added his second goal with 17 minutes to go before Frings grabbed Germany's fourth with a stunning shot in the 87th. It was the highest-scoring World Cup opening match in the tournament's history. Klose and Wanchope were the first players to score more than one goal in an opening fixture. The first four World Cup tournament opening matches between 1966 and 1978 finished goalless. The 10 opening matches from 1966 until 2002 produced only nine goals. 
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