ITALY CLAIM WORLD CUP

(Image taken from Soccernet)

In '94, Romario's Brazil beat Roberto Baggio's Italy side after the Italian assasin skied a penalty in a shootout after a 0-0 draw. Brazil returned to the final in '98 with Ronaldo now their main striker - but he fell ill and the sambaistas got ravaged 3-0 by Zinedine Zidane's France. Ronaldo made up for that though by scoring twice in the '02 final, seeing off a Germany side that really shouldn't have been there.

Well the '98 final was the only World Cup final France had played in prior to this year but Italy certainly have more history at this fixture than Baggio's miss. The last time they lifted the trophy though was back in 1982 when Paulo Rossi led them to a 3-1 win over West Germany. Neither side could really have expected to make the final in the Olympiastadion this year though and as far as Italy were concerned, the Duran Duran line "save me your prayers till the morning after" came to mind - half their squad have been caught up in the Serie A matchfixing mess via their clubs.

Well the first major event of the match was Thierry Henry getting seemingly concussed. He recovered to win a 7th minute penalty which Zidane stuck in though. At which point Italy started firing in a load of corners and in the 19th minute Marco Matterazzi headed one of those in. The Italians wound up having the edge for the rest of the half but couldn't score any more goals.

The second half was dominated by a load of substitutions, Italy using up all of theirs in the half. France on the other hand had no need for substitutes, hammering the Italian goal though it was the Azzurri who wound up hitting the net only for the linesman to raise his flag for offside. Neither side were evergoing to break this side of the whistle though.

Which left us with extra time, at which point the French really shot themselves in the foot, taking off key players Viera and Henry. Still it was still Les Bleus who ran the show in the first extra 15 minutes, not that they could hit the net, given the Italian record on penalty shootouts is as bad as England's, Marcello Lippi's crew knew they had to do something.

Of course, in the second period of extra time, something happened...Zidane headbutted Matterazzi and got sent off. Why did the happen? Hell knows - my best guess was that the Italian defender was being racist. Bottom line though, Zidane failed to get away with what Figo did in the round 2 match against Holland and from there on in both sides were really playing for penalties.

In the shootout, Andrea Pirlo opened the scoring for Italy and Sylvan Wiltord equalised for France. Matterazzi then scored...only for French substitute David Trezeguet to hit the bar. From there Daniele de Rossi scored for Italy, then Eric Abidal for France then Alessandro Del Piero for Italy and Willy Sagnol for France. 4-3 Italy and it came down to Fabio Grosso vs Fabian Barthez. Grosso won and Italy claimed the World Cup.

Elsewhere, 3rd place got tidied up when Germany faced Portugal in Stuttgart. The first half didn't contain many highlights though Germany certainly had the edge. That edge finally turned into goals when Bastien Schweinsteiger fired in a quality goal, then a freekick which Avando Petit could only put into his own net then a second quality strike. The only good news from Portugal's point of view was that Luis Figo got to sign off in style - firing in a perfecto cross from which Nuno Gomes headed in a consolation goal.

So, the 2006 World Cup is over and overall it's been a quality tournament - definately better than '02 due to the better quality of teams involved in the latter stages - I'm sure as hell that neither of the '02 semis were as good as Germany vs Italy. I guess the only real bummer is that one of the world's best players blew up in the World Cup final and the first Italy team to win the World Cup in my lifetime did so with stormclouds on the horizon.

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