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Olympic team suffers defeat against Juventus
By Cruz Fang (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-07-23 11:40
China's Olympic soccer team was defeated 4-0 by Italian Serie A side Juventus in a friendly match Sunday.
It was the second consecutive loss for Ratomir Dujkovic's side against Italian top flight teams after being beaten by Inter 3-0 last Tuesday.
Shandong Luneng forward Lu Zheng, whose argument with a Chinese assistant coach almost escalated into fight the day before, was expelled by team management and sent back to China.
French international David Trezeguet opened scoring 34 minutes into the game while captain Alessandro Del Piero, and players Pavel Nedved, Raffaele Palladino put in more goals in the second half.
As part of Dujkovic's drive to test his players, China changed all 11 players in the starting lineup in the second half. Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri also used nine substitutes.
China's Serbian coach thought the match was a good exercise for his players and the experience drawn from these matches should be remembered for rest of their lives.
Ranieri was also satisfied with the results his team received from this pre-season warm-up as the team just concluded a training camp.
"We played against a team good at moving the ball on the pitch and they made us run around, which is exactly what we wanted," Ranieri said.
China will play Lecce on Wednesday.
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