The supposedly weakened Germany humiliated Australia 4-0 at the World Cup Group D match held in Durban stadium with an attendance of 62,660 on Sunday.

Germany has an overally young squad, their youngest in 76 years while Australia boasted of great experience as they have 12 players who played at previous FIFA World Cup.

The two sides had one meeting in the World Cup history when in 1974 West Germany defeated Australia 3-0 in the first round. In their most recent duel, Germany disposed of Australia 4-3 at the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2005.

Germany have been supposedly weakened as captain Michael Ballack, goalkeeper Rene Adler, defender Heiko Westermann and midfielder Simon Rolfes missed the World Cup due to injuries.

The Socceroos played aggressively when the match began, pressing the Germans to some mistakes. At the 4th minute, the Aussies had an early chance that Tim Cahill hit a corner towards goal but Philipp Lahm blocked on the line.

However, the Germans found their rhythm at the 8th minute that Thomas Muller pulled the ball back for Lukas Podolski to power home a left-foot drive. Australia's most capped player and goalie Mark Schwarzer failed to keep it out.

At the 20th minute, the Australians responded as Brett Emerton swung over a deep cross but Jason Culina headed just wide.

At the 26th minute, Lahm, captain of the German side, curled over a cross from the right and Klose battled home the ball to make the Germans lead 2-0. Now Klose had 11 World Cup goals to his credit, four away from Ronaldo's 15.

Later the Aussies created several chances but saw their efforts in vain. The Germans led 2-0 at halftime.

Seven minutes into the second half, the Pim Verbeek's side got motivated as Brett Holman smashed a left-foot shot just wide of the right-hand post.

At the 56th minute, the Australians were dealt a big blow as Everton's Tim Cahill was red-carded for a lunging tackle on Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Thomas Mueller of Bayern Munich made it 3-0 as he powered home a right-footer at the 67th minutes. Three minutes later, Cacau, who replaced Klose, received a cross from Mesut Oezil and slotted home from a close range to make it 4-0 for the Germans, making Germany's record of winning their last five opening FIFA World Cup matches continue.

"We were disappointed about the result. Germany played much better than we did. We have to learn from this game and we have to recover from it in 5 to 6 days. We have to score in the next two games." said Verbeek in the post-match press conference.

"The next game is a final," Verbeek said of the match against Ghana. "We have to win that game."

German coach Joachim Loew said: "Today we were dominating for the whole match, but Australians were quite defensive.This is a good match and a good start, of course we can be happy, can be confident, we want to reach the list of 16."

Loew tipped the Aussies as a team with a fighting spirit. "We have to create pressure and opportunities," he said.

When talking about his young squad, Loew said: "We have a very young team. It can develop and has grown together over the last few weeks."

Germany will then play Serbia and Ghana in the next two group matches.

Podolski, who is from Cologne of Bundesliga, was voted best player of the match. He said: "We were pretty good from the very beginning to the very last. We implemented very well what we wanted to do."