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Tanaka blow hits as Japan hold hosts
31/05/2006: Japan's excellent performance in obtaining a 2-2 draw against Germany was overshadowed by the news Makoto Tanaka will miss the World Cup with a hamstring injury and will be replaced by Teruyuki Moniwa.
Tanaka had been expected to start for Japan when they play their first game of World Cup 2006 against Australia in Kaiserslautern on Monday June 12.
Japan forced themselves into a two-goal lead playing good football throughout thanks to well taken strikes from Naohiro Takahara.
Germany levelled the game with late goals from Bastian Schweinsteiger and Miroslav Klose.
Japan coach Zico was pleased with his team's effort but believes they must be more ruthless in attack.
"I am delighted with what we produced," he said
"We had a lot of chances but we only took two and that needs to be practised in training.
"This game was like the 2-2 against Brazil at last year's Confederations Cup when we played against a top team.
"There are not many better football teams in the world and we pushed them all the way.
"We still need to be more effective in front of goal at the World Cup and will be working on that from now on."
Japan starting line-up v Germany:
Goalkeeper
Yoshikatsku Kawaguchi
Defence
Tsuneyasu Miyamoto
Alessandro Santos
Keisuke Tsuboi
Akira Kaji
Midfield
Yuji Nakazawa
Hidetoshi Nakata
Shunsuke Nakamura
Takashi Fukunishi
Attack
Naohiro Takahara (Masashi Oguro, 78)
Atsushi Yanagisawa (Keiji Tamada, 80)
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