World champions Italy stumble but France win

LONDON, Sept 3: World champions Italy stumbled out of the blocks at the start of the race to the Euro 2008 finals when they were held to a 1-1 draw by Lithuania in their opening qualifying match in Naples on Saturday.

There was also a big upset in Bydgoszcz where Poland, under new Dutch coach Leo Beenhakker, crashed to a shock 3-1 home defeat by Finland, who have never reached the finals of a major tournament.

Elsewhere, the first big night of qualifying action ended in victory for all the favourites to reach the finals in Austria and Switzerland in two years' time.

World Cup runners-up France won their first competitive match of the post-Zinedine Zidane era in impressive fashion by crushing Georgia 3-0 in Tbilisi.

There were also opening wins for England, who beat Andorra 5-0 at Old Trafford, Germany, who overcame a spirited Ireland 1-0 in Stuttgart, the Netherlands who squeezed a 1-0 win over Luxembourg, and Spain, who beat Liechtenstein 4-0.

Germany, playing in a qualifying match for the first time in nearly three years after going through automatically to the World Cup finals as hosts, beat Ireland with a 57th-minute shot from Lukas Podolski which took a wicked deflection off Ireland skipper Robbie Keane.

Ireland's manager Steve Staunton was banished to the stands for kicking a water bottle in protest.

The Dutch had an unexpectedly tough battle in Luxembourg securing all three points with a 17th-minute goal from Joris Mathijsen.

There were also big wins for Scotland, who beat the Faroe Islands 6-0 in Glasgow, Slovakia, who beat Cyprus 6-1 and Norway, who stunned once-mighty Hungary 4-1 in Budapest.

European champions Greece, who have been far from impressive since winning Euro 2004 in Portugal, opened their campaign with a narrow 1-0 win in Moldova thanks to a late goal from substitute Nikos Liberopoulos.

Earlier Angelos Basinas blasted a penalty kick over the bar.

Italy were expected to enjoy a party atmosphere in Naples against Lithuania, who had never scored a goal against the Italians in four previous meetings.

New Italian coach Roberto Donadoni fielded a B squad in a friendly against Croatia last month which Italy lost 2-0, but had many of the World Cup players back for his first competitive fixture in charge.

The World Cup trophy was paraded atop a blue sportscar before the match, but it was Lithuania who hit top gear first with Tomas Danilevicius scoring the opener after 21 minutes.

Italy were level eight minutes later through Filippo Inzaghi, but could not add to their tally in the second half and had to settle for a point.

They now go to Paris for Wednesday's encounter with France, less than two months after their penalty shootout victory over the French in the World Cup final.

France, without Zidane who retired after the July 9 final, were quickly firing on all cylinders unlike the Italians, and scored twice in the first 15 minutes against Georgia to silence a capacity 55,000-strong home crowd in Tbilisi.

Florent Malouda and Louis Saha grabbed the early goals and the visitors made it 3-0 less than a minute after the break when Thierry Henry was credited with the goal which was directed into his own net by Georgia full back Malkhaz Asatiani.

The Georgians, under their new German coach Klaus Toppmoeller, were looking for an upset after thrashing the Faroe Islands 6-0 in their opener two weeks ago.

The Faroese went down to another 6-0 defeat as Scotland scored their biggest win in a competitive match for 37 years.

England were also untroubled as they began their campaign with a 5-0 win over Andorra at Old Trafford.

They also took control of the game with two early goals from Peter Crouch and Steven Gerrard inside the first 13 minutes.

Crouch added another to take his tally to 10 goals in his last nine England matches, with Jermain Defoe also scoring twice.

There was not such good news for the other British teams as Wales lost 2-1 to a last-minute Czech Republic goal in Prague and Northern Ireland were crushed 3-0 in Belfast by Iceland.

Eidur Gudjohnsen scored his 17th goal for his country to equal the all-time Icelandic scoring record set by Rikhardur Jonsson who scored 17 times between 1947 and 1965.

Switzerland and Austria, who co-host the finals in 2008, were involved in a four-team tournament in Switzerland, with the Swiss winning their early match 1-0 against Venezuela in Basel.

Austria twice came from behind to draw 2-2 with Costa Rica in Geneva later.

Results:

Group A

Poland 1 Finland 3

Serbia 1 Azerbaijan 0

Group B

Italy 1 Lithuania 1

Georgia 0 France 3

Scotland 6 Faroe Islands 0

Group C

Moldova 0 Greece 1

Hungary 1 Norway 4