Spain extend their winning run

The National staff

• Last Updated: November 19. 2009 11:10PM UAE / November 19. 2009 7:10PM GMT

European champions Spain sounded off another warning to the other World Cup finalists with a resounding 5-1 win in Austria on Wednesday.

Vicente del Bosque’s team, who found themselves 1-0 down, came back to win their eighth game in a row and 23rd in 24 matches. “We’ve reached a spectacular standard,” said the striker David Villa, whose two goals took his tally to 35 in 54 internationals. “But this is today, we’ll have to see what happens in June.”

Valencia teammate David Silva added: “It’s been a really good game, the truth is that the team is on the way up, I hope we can keep it up for the whole of next year. We’re enjoying ourselves on the pitch and, when you’re enjoying it, things work out well.”

Elsewhere, Lukas Podolski scored an injury time penalty, his second goal of the game, to give Germany a 2-2 draw with the Ivory Coast in their first game since the death of goalkeeper Robert Enke.

Injured captain Michael Ballack laid an Enke shirt on the German substitutes’ bench, Ivory Coast players wore shirts sporting the goalkeeper’s picture and a minute’s silence was held before the match. After the game Germany’s coach, Joachim Loew, said the players had not yet got over Enke’s death.

“You could see it was still affecting us. I felt sick. We couldn’t free ourselves,” said Loew. “But the team were focused and you saw they got into the match and wanted to win.”

Elsewhere, defender Giorgio Chiellini scored Italy’s only goal against Sweden in Cesena. The Italian FA said afterwards the future of coach Marcelo Lippi will be decided before next year’s finals.

* With agencies