The Czech Republic have gone into half-time 2-0 up against the USA in their Group E encounter in Gelsenkirchen on Monday, but have been hit by an injury to Jan Koller.

Czech Republic striker Jan Koller opened the scoring against the USA in just the 5th minute of the game after Zdenek Grygera crossed a beautiful ball from the right for Koller to head past US keeper Kasey Keller to make it 1-0.

Marek Jankulovski and the captain Tomas Galasek defended the US attacks well, with Fulham’s Brian McBride playing a lone striker role, and being easily cut out.

With their lead, the Czech Republic were quite happy to take their to time to build the play up in the first-half, and looked dangerous on their attacks.

Juventus' Pavel Nedved and Czech Republic and Manchester United veteran Karel Poborsky were managing to get the space to deliver lots of crosses into the area, and forcing some good defending from the US.

Against the run of play, the US captain Claudio Reyna almost equalised in the 28th minute with a shot from outside the penalty area, that beat the Czech keeper Petr Cech, but rebounded off the post and away to safety.

This was as close as Bruce Arena’s team were to get during the first-half, with the Czech back four holding well.

The Czech’s broke through the US defence again in the 35th minute, with an amazing long-range shot from new Arsenal signing Tomas Rosicky hammering home the shot from 30-yards, past Keller and into the top corner.

The pressure was all on the US, who were restricted to long-range shots which never troubled the Czech's.

But in the 41st minute, the scorer of the opening goal Jan Koller was injured.

Koller fell clutching his right hamstring in the 42nd minute of the first-half, after having scored the opening goal in the match.

He was stretchered off and replaced by Vratislav Lokvenc, who himself is just returning from injury.

The game went into half-time still holding the two-goal lead, but worried about the injury to their prolific striker.

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