Monday, July 10, 2006

Congratulations - ITALY

That’s it then, it has all finished and after two and a half hours of football and penalties the new champions of the World are Italy. Did they deserve it? On the night no, as the better overall team yes. The one thing though that this World Cup final will be remembered for though is the sending off of the legendary Zinedine Zidane in his last ever game of professional football. He unleashed an outrageous head butt that floored his opponent and all because he allegedly called him a name. Where was his discipline and self control. France were starting to assert themselves and looked the more likely winners until this happened. Whatever he was called surely could not be something he had never heard before and could have been something he dealt with when the game was finished. He had demonstrated his ability to score penalties in the semi-final and final and could now have to face up to the fact that he may have lost his team mates the trophy.

The game itself was a little disappointing, mainly because the Italians did not live up to their semi-final performance. Instead of pushing on from their good first half they became a team that was afraid to lose and let France back in to dominate the closing stages. Had Zidane not been sent off their was a very real chance they could have lost. This is to take nothing away from the excellent performance of their captain Cannavaro who had the ultimate pleasure of lifting the world Cup on his 100th appearance for his country. Italian football may be in turmoil, but they are now the World Champions and will need to be treated with the utmost respect by the teams they face in the European Championship qualifiers. They are the big winners of this years world cup and later on this week I will discuss the winners and losers of this years tournament, and you can probably expect Zidane to fall in both categories.

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