Friendlies: Cruz takes down China Tuesday 17 July, 2007
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Julio Cruz scored Inter’s first goal of the season in a 3-0 friendly victory over the Chinese national team.
There was a distinctly South American flavour to the scoresheet, as Argentine Santiago Solari and Brazilian Adriano were also on target.
Roberto Mancini’s men opened their 2007-08 campaign with this comfortable win and shelved the trident experiments to field David Suazo alongside Cruz.
The former Cagliari hitman used his pace to earn the penalty after 33 minutes, which was converted by Cruz.
China called Francesco Toldo into several saves, most notably on Jiang Ning and Shen Longyuan.
After the break Adriano came on and went close with a lob before Solari turned in Mario Balotelli’s cross.
Adriano made his mark by shrugging off a challenge and chipping the goalkeeper.
Inter 3-0 China
Scorers: Cruz pen 33, Solari 58, Adriano 60
Inter: Toldo (Orlandoni 58); Filippini, Fatic, Materazzi (Samuel 46), Maxwell (Pedrelli 46); Maaroufi, Bolzoni, Filkor (Slavkovski 78), Stankovic (Solari 46); Cruz (Adriano 46), Suazo (Balotelli 46)China: Wang Dalei; Lv Jianjun (Bai Lei 46), Wan Houliang, Dai Lin, Yuan Weiwei (Liu Yu 74); Shen Longyuan (Dai Qinhua 56), Cui Peng (Li Wei 44), Wang Xiaolong (Zhang Wenzhao 46); Chen Tao (Huang Lin 58); Jiang Ning (Zhang Xiaobin 56), Lv Zheng (Jiang Chen 56)