Klose to play 100th game
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) _ Germany striker Miroslav Klose is set to play his 100th international in the World Cup quarterfinal against Argentina, and hopes to make sure it won't be his last chance to become the country's all-time top scorer at the event.??
Klose has scored 50 goals in 99 games for Germany and his 12 World Cup goals put him equal with Pele in fourth place overall. He is Germany's second most successful scorer at the World Cup after Gerd Mueller, who had 14. Mueller holds the overall German record with 68 goals.
The 32-year-old striker has two goals so far at his third World Cup and Germany coach Joachim Loew says Klose is still hungry for more success at the tournament.
"When someone plays 100 games for a country like Germany, that speaks for his quality, especially since he has scored 50 goals. That's a goal every two games and that's a high level," Loew said Friday, one day before the quarterfinal against Argentina.
"He is still very ambitious," the coach said.
Loew had stood by Klose even though the Polish-born striker went through a rough season at Bayern Munich, scoring only three goals in the Bundesliga and spending a lot of time on the bench.
By picking Klose in the World Cup squad and making him the starting forward, Loew raised some eyebrows in Germany.
But Klose has repaid that trust, even though he missed one game by getting sent off in a 1-0 loss to Serbia in the group stage. Klose has said that Loew's faith was very important for him to regain his scoring touch.
"He doesn't get derailed by weak phases, he knows what he has to do in training. He is self-critical and he is modest," Loew said.
In Klose's World Cup debut in 2002, he scored a hat trick in Germany's opening 8-0 rout of Saudi Arabia.
The striker said he thinks Germany's current team is better than the 2002 squad, which reached the final.
"We created fewer chances in 2002 than now. It's one of the great advantages of this team that we easily create many chances," Klose said in an interview posted on the German federation's website.
Loew said he has given his players the freedom to make decisions on the pitch.
"We still have order and discipline but we don't put players into corsets in which they can't move. We have a philosophy, the way we want to play. I had a script in my mind and I picked players who can implement what I want," Loew said.
Loew said he was not only interested in results, but also in how Germany played and presented itself.
"We can be pleased until now, but we also want to go further. Our goal was always to reach the semifinals," Loew said.
Klose also sees Germany going through.
"Argentina should not be the end of the road," he said.
If Germany wins, it will have made at least the semis for the third straight World Cup. The last of its three titles came in 1990.
Loew could become the first German coach to win the World Cup title in his first attempt.
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