FRANCE 98 – General Media News Template

Defender Christian Ziege was forced to sit out Germany’s first World Cup training session on French soil here Sunday because of a cold.

The AC Milan star, who scored a goal two days ago in Germany’s 7-0 destruction of Luxembourg in Mannheim, was ordered to rest as the team were put through their paces by coach Berti Vogts. “We’ve done all the hard physical work already and now its just a question of tactical fine-tuning,” said AC Milan-bound striker Oliver Bierhoff, who was first to take the field at the training venue near here.

The three-times World Cup-winning Germans arrived in Nice on a flight from Frankfurt earlier in the day piloted by Hans Rahmann, the Lufthansa captain who flew the West German team back home after they won the 1980 European Championships in Italy. Germany, in group F with Iran, the United States, and Yugoslavia, play their first World Cup game in Paris on June 15 against the Americans. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a close friend of coach Vogts, told the team he was keeping his diary clear for July 12, and hoped to see the Germans in the final.