Month: July 2006

The head of Zinedine Zidane could have brought a sense of triumph to France in the final of the World Cup yesterday instead it brought a sense of disbelief and despair.

It could have been the perfect finish to the career of the greatest European footballer of his generation and after France had taken the lead from Zidane’s penalty it looked as if it would hold true.

But Italy’s Materazzi soon equalised and the two teams were deadlocked and neither seemed likely to score until the perfect chance fell to the head of Zidane but a heroic save by the Italian goalkeeper Buffon denied him.

Then in the second period of extra time came incident that will be forever remembered as the defining moment of this World Cup, Zidane seemed to lose his head and headbutted Materazzi in the chest, which after the intervention of the fourth offical caused the French captain to be sent off.

Who can say whether losing their talismanic leader cost France the match? I don’t think it’s true, the Italian penalty takers were flawless and France seemed fairly composed and unaffected, so I think it just simply came down to the awful nature that is the lottery of the penalty shootout.

Interestingly Zidane will be the only French player to leave the tournament with a trophy. He was awarded the Golden Ball for the best player of the tournament, an award that was voted on by the press during halftime of the final. It’s likely that had the voting taken place after the match then he probably would not have won this award.

The bane of the England football team in major tournaments the penalty shootout did for us yet again and we lost to Portugal. Was the loss of Rooney who got sent off for what seemed a quite vicious stamp on an opponents groin the deciding factor in the match?

Who can really say but I’m sure it will be much discussed in the days to come. Down to ten men England upped their performance and held Portugal at bay and though the real chances were few both teams looked like they could score. But it was not to be and the Portuguese goalkeeper Ricardo repeated his performance from two years agao and made the crucial saves in the penalty shootout.

I hope Portugal go on to win as it is slightly less crushing in retrospect to go out to the eventual winners but I think that the winner might just prove to be the resurgent force that is France.

A great match, much better than the England-Portugal one, saw the favourites Brazil put out by a French team that most people thought were over the hill. Perhaps they have secretly discovered the fountain of youth because they were back to their best form in their previous match against Spain after spending years in a state of relative mediocrity and they kept that form up here against Brazil.

It’s not as if they have replaced their aging stars with new young talent like Argentina, this team still features the players such as Zidane and Barthez the world champions of 1998 and the laughing stock of 2002.

This will be the first time since 1982 that we’ve had all European semi-finals with neither Brazil nor Argentina making it to that stage here. I think that we will probably see a final between the hosts Germany and the comeback kings of France.