Warning from England rivals

Do not back against Argentina. From the hitman spite of one of Walter Samuel's tackles to the artistic pirouettes of Pablo Aimar, they took off the gloves here in Stuttgart yet still left us wondering just how much more mean and magnificent they'll be 51 days hence in Sapporo.

This juggernaut clash with Germany was as unfriendly as friendlies get. "It was hard, like we were already playing in the World Cup," as Real Madrid's Santiago Solari put it. Yet, as they celebrated their 1-0 win, the ominous suspicion remained that they could have found another gear had they chosen.

No Batistuta, Veron, Crespo nor Ayala. Diego Simeone stayed on the bench and Javier Saviola got only a 15 minute cameo, yet there were still enough glimpses of their artistic riches and streetwise nous to remind us that England can only approach the meeting on 7 June with hope, not expectation.

Okay, so Germany were themselves missing a dozen World Cup probables and defended with much of the incompetence which marked their humiliation against England. Yet though this was no Munich demolition job, Argentina's superiority over the home side seemed just as vast.

Thomas Linke rattled their post early on, some of their defending was slapdash and, in the World Cup, Facundo Quiroga could have been sent off rather than booked for the foul which prevented Miroslav Klose from netting a late equaliser. Yet even not at their best, their victory somehow never felt in doubt.

They have a swagger of a team which has forgotten how to lose - not surprising since it's only happened once in 25 games over nearly two-and-a-half years - and which, as Solari noted, has "two or three great players for every position".

Take the playmaker role behind the front three. Substitute Marcelo Gallardo had orchestrated affairs superbly there until being caught by a challenge from Jens Jeremies, which saw him taken off on a stretcher with a torn thigh muscle and left coach Marcelo Bielsa wondering if he's lost the Monaco man for Japan.