Frankfurt, June 29 :

Millions of fans in Germany, Argentina and elsewhere in the world are waiting with baited breath for the two teams’ quarter-final at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on Friday.

Both sides have been praised for some attacking football they have played in the tournament so far. Also both sides’ goal scoring records provide hints of a cracker of a match with both the giants having scored 10 goals each and have conceded just each.

Jurgen Klinsmann’s men got their World Cup campaign to a perfect start with four goals in the opener against Costa Rica, followed by a narrow 1-0 win over neighbours Poland. A resounding 3-0 defeat of Ecuador cheered up Germany, before Lukas Podolski netted twice more in the Round of 16 against Sweden.

Klinsmann’s attacking strategy may have been forced upon him by problems at the back though, but on the other hand there has been no complete team in the tournament. The game against Argentina is a very hard test, especially for the defence when I think of Lionel Messi, Javier Saviola, Hernan Crespo and Carlos Tevez, says Germany coach Jurgen Klinsmann.

Torsten Frings will miss a potential semi-final match if he receives a yellow card against Argentina. Miroslav Klose has a total of nine World Cup goals and is one away from becoming the 12th player in World Cup history to net 10 goals.

Gerd Muller (14), Jurgen Klinsmann (11) and Helmut Rahn (10) are the other Germans on the list.

The Argentines’ scoring pattern is little different, as half-a-dozen of their goals came in a single match against Serbia and Montenegro. The Argentines had opened their campaign with two goals against Côte d’Ivoire and they struck twice more against Mexico in the last 16.

Their deadly forward line failed to register only once, in a goalless draw with Netherlands in Frankfurt.

Both Gabriel Heinze and Juan Pablo Sorin will miss a potential semi-final match if they receive a yellow card.

Hernan Crespo has scored in the last four World Cup matches he has played in, and is the first player to score in three different matches in this 2006 tournament.

Roberto Ayala won his 104th cap in the second round match and is now just two away from his country’s record of 106 held by Diego Simeone.

Argentines will derive both comfort and inspiration from their overall record in this tantalising fixture. The nations have met 16 times at full international level, with five wins for Germany, four draws, and seven Argentine victories, the two-time world champions finding the net 23 times to the Europeans’ tally of 22.

Painuly, an editorial consultant with The Himalayan Times, is writing exclusively for the paper from Germany