Experience prevailed in the Parc des Princes last evening when Berti Vogts's ageing German team put down a bunch of young pretenders with some authority. Pedigree prevailed and ambition finished a distant second as Germany summoned all their vast reserves of experience to win, perhaps even more comfortably than the scoreline suggested.

Andy Moeller and Jens Jeremies provided the midfield drive and Juergen Klinnsman the vital cutting edge up front to ensure that the old technocrats were never going to be the first of the favourites to fall.

Apart from a brief spell when they injected extra pace into the game immediately after half-time, the United States seldom threatened to deliver on their pre-match pledge of running at the heart of the opposing defence.

Instead, Juergen Kohler and the admirable Olaf Thon presided with panache in the German penalty area, with Kohler's 32-year-old legs carrying him on some incisive raids into the American half of the field. Yet, in spite of the emphatic nature of their win, Vogts was not wholly pleased.

"When you get an early goal as we did you expect to be able to dictate the way the game develops but it took us a long time to do that," he said. "The United States has an improved team and at times they made it hard for us in the second half."

His American counterpart Sam Sampson was generous in his assessment of the German match plan but was quick to salvage some satisfaction by offering the opinion that his team had played better in the second half.

"I don't think we can argue about the result but it wasn't the mismatch many expected," he said. "We were the team which was supposed to rely on the counterattack but as it worked out it was Germany who caught us out on the break for their second goal. I believe we won a lot of respect with this performance."

He was right to a point but apart from a 10-minute spell early in the second half when Frankie Hejduk came close it was always going to be an unrewarding evening for them.

Elegant in their better moments, expedient when the game demanded, Germany produced a fluent performance in which players interchanged roles with a facility which at times baffled the opposition.

Moeller, immensely powerful as ever, was occasionally inspirational in midfield and alongside him, Stefan Reuter grafted as diligently as ever.

The downside of their performance was that Thomas Hassler sustained a knee injury which has been initially diagnosed as torn ligaments. "If this is the case, it is very serious for he has already had an operation on the same knee," said Vogts.

Hassler, perpetual motion itself, was never less than conspicuous in the opening half, a display which contrasted sharply with that of the highly rated Oliver Bierhoff in the front line. Confronted by the solid but scarcely brilliant defence of Tom Dooley and Eddie Pope, Bierhoff showed only in short, sharp bursts and generally it was Klinnsman who led the line.

After a difficult season at club level, he now looked as sharp as ever and, almost inevitably, figured prominently in the build-up to that critical opening goal. He knocked Thon's corner kick back across the face of the six-yard area for Moeller to win the jump and head past goalkeeper Kasey Keller after just nine minutes.

Then he finally killed off their challenge with a typical strike in the 65th minute. Bierhoff crossed to the far post and after killing the ball on his chest, Klinsmann stepped neatly inside Dooley's tackle to finish in clinical fashion.

The Tottenham player ought to have had a second goal but after Kohler, on the charge, had produced a precise cross, Klinsmann got his angles marginally wrong and missed the target by inches. The Americans, depending on Chad Deering and Cobi Jones for their creative skills in midfield, were entitled to be disappointed in the contribution of both and it wasn't until Hejduk and later Roy Wegerle made belated appearances that they perked up.