Italy beat France on penalties in Berlin to win their fourth World Cup
So the World Cup's over and it ended with a bit of a bang -- and quite a big one if you happen to be Marco Materazzi (and if you are reading this Marco, don't read the previous articles where I've been a bit rude about you).
The most important thing to get straight about Zidane's "Moment of Madness" was that it was a head-butt and not a chest-butt. Zidane used his head to butt Materazzi -- it may have landed on the Italian's chest, but that's by the by. Let's have no more silly talk about chest-butts.
What a way for Zizou to go. If you're going to assault someone in your last-ever professional game of football I suppose it may as well be in extra time of the World Cup final.
I was slightly disappointed that he went for the chest -- somewhere on Materazzi's face would have produced an explosion of blood and the sort of spectacle fitting for the event, especially as the football itself was pretty bloodless.
Also, how tempted was ZZ to make a grab for the trophy as trudged off? He was inches away -- he's already attacked a fellow player, he may as well go the whole hog and hold the trophy hostage in the French dressing room. An opportunity missed.
The game itself was pretty dull after an eventful first half -- France were better than Italy, who seemed happy to go to penalties which is amazing when you consider their record, but what a way to break their duck.
Italian football was on a high for a brief moment but now the judgement on the match fixing scandal has been issued, the focus is back on the murky dealings of the Serie A sides and which star players will be leaving Italy for pastures new and cleaner.
Victorious coach Marcello Lippi has also resigned and is replaced by former international Roberto Donadoni.
How was the World Cup for the rest of the world? Europe will be the happiest with all four semi-finalists hailing from that continent and only Brazil and Argentina breaking their grip on the eight quarterfinal places.
Looking to the future, the French will lose Zidane and Claude Makelele from their midfield for sure and possibly also Lilian Thuram and Fabien Barthez to retirement. Coach Raymond Domenech didn't seem to trust any other midfield schemer to directly replace the talismanic Zidane so it may be that the team is modelled more closely around Thierry Henry.
Of the other major European nations, Spain did their usual turn-up and go-out too soon, England did their usual disappointing under-performance while the Dutch bucked the trend by being unusually dull. Marco Van Basten has always said that the tournament would come too soon for his new team but they were still underwhelming, especially in getting dragged into a kicking match with Portugal in the second round.
One team that didn't disappoint was Germany and their qualifying campaign for Euro 2008 will be fascinating to watch. Before the World Cup, coach Jurgen Klinsmann was taking terrible criticism due to some poor friendly performances but when the tournament kicked off, that all changed with his team's swashbuckling performance getting Germany further than most people predicted ( but not me ) and scoring plenty of goals.
With Klinsmann now gone and replaced by his assistant Joachim Low (the dark haired gentleman who sat next to Klinsi throughout the tournament and dressed eerily similarly to him) will the Nationalmannschaft be able to keep up the momentum?
A World Cup in your own country always sees the host outperform -- will the side be able to keep up the good work or revert to the bad form of their pre-World Cup matches? Heed the curse of the third place play-off winners.
Despite having most of their players plying their trade in Europe now, South American sides still find European World Cups hard to succeed at. Brazil never got going and Argentina were unfortunate to come up against Germany in the quarterfinals, although some cautious substitutions in that game by Jose Pekerman didn't do them any favours. Both will expect to do much better next time in South Africa -- World Cups held outside of Europe seem to suit Argentina and especially Brazil.
Of the rest of the world, Asia did not justify their extra place with none of their sides challenging for a knockout position although Australia did well and will now join that bloc within FIFA for qualifying for next time.
The CONCACAF region produced one round of 16 participant in Mexico who went down gallantly to Argentina while Costa Rica and the USA did as expected in failing to get out of their group, the latter hampered by a tough group.
Africa's best side was largely considered to be Ivory Coast who failed to progress from their group with Netherlands, Argentina and Serbia. But as mentioned, the Dutch weren't brilliant at Germany 2006 and so you have to conclude that the Ivorians just weren't good enough.
Ghana actually proved to be the top African team -- they did get to the knock out stage and were unlucky to lose to Brazil. Unlike Ivory Coast they did manage to beat one of the more fancied teams in their group (Czech Republic) and also managed to create a diplomatic incident along the way thanks to John Paintsil's Israeli flag waving.
To round things off, here's my team of the tournament:
Goalkeeper: Gianluigi Buffon
Left Back: Philipp Lahm
Centre Back: Fabio Cannavaro
Centre Back: Lilian Thuram
Right Back: Sergio Ramos
Left Midfield: Zinedine Zidane
Centre Midfield: Gennaro Gattuso
Centre Midfield: Andrea Pirlo
Right Midfield: Michael Essien
Forward: Miroslav Klose
Forward: Fernando Torres
Now that's all over, roll on the new season!
