Well, that was the final, then. As with so many matches over the last month or so, commentators, anchormen and pundits alike rushed to emphasise that despite a lack of genuine quality, the match at least contained undeniable dollops of drama... as if quality and drama are mutually exclusive in a football match: no hat-tricks but lots of red cards, eh? Anyway, if you're going to have a World Cup Final filled with drama then it may as well be drama, and at least in this respect last night's match didn't let the average viewer down. It was, verily, a weekend of high-quality drama from the BBC! (see gratuitous photo, below)
Straight up, no sooner had Motty finished an introductory 3 minutes comprised entirely of statstics then one of said stats reared its ugly head in a kind-of relevant way - it went along the lines of "all finals have had quiet starts since the Holland v Germany final of '74 when a penalty was conceded straight away"... and then Malouda goes down under the slightest of slight touches from Materazzi, and Les Blancs have a pen within 5 minutes.
DRAMA!
Up steps Zinedine Zidane, the praises of the world's press still ringing in his ears, to convert the spot-kick with a cheeky dink about two inches away from making him look the biggest bell-end in the world - showing Lineker and Crouch how it's done, the poxy git. It's in off the crossbar and then out again!
DRAMA!
So what do Italy do? Play for the 1-0 loss? Far from it - this Marcelo Lippi's Italy so they come out all guns blazing... well, all guns except for Totti, Perrotta and Camoranesi, that is. Irrespective, they win a corner, Pirlo shakes his hair and minces over to the corner flag, and whips in a gorgeous cross onto the head of erstwhile villain Materazzi - Barthez flaps - and it's in the back of the net! 1-1 with less than twenty minutes played in the World Cup Final.
DRAMA!
The match continues. In the second half, Italy retreat inside their shell, where they find another, smaller, shell, which they also retreat into. France come at them with a surprising degree of individual flair (Malouda proves the surprise) but little cohesion and, er, no strikers - Henry makes some lovely runs before passing to no-one, while Malouda makes some equally effective incursions into the shell before crossing to that very same no-one. How very Portugal.
Italy really do seem content to play out time - despite an array of ostensibly attacking substitutions (Iaquinta, Del Piero and, um, De Rossi) they let wave after ineffectual wave of French attacking wash over their rocks (Cannavaro being the rockiest rock of all). Not much happens, despite all the
TENSION!
so let me cut to the chase:
110 minutes, the game is heading towards penalties. Zidane loses his cool a little bit and decides to nut Materazzi to oblivion. Uncertain delay follows, during which football experiences what in all likelihood shall prove an evolutionary leap - despite FIFA's protestations to the contrary, I find it hard to believe that the referee came to his decision to show Zizou the red card without someone, somewhere, seeing a replay and telling him the score.
I also imagine that, soon after the butt, Clive Tyldesley's head exploded on ITV - not that anyone would have noticed - as he struggled to comprehend "just... why... Zizou... magician... conjuror.... head-butt.... Final.... does... not... compute........ oooooohhhhhhhhhhhh who's going to present Jim'll Fix It nooooooooooow"
Well: video, not video, assistant referee, fourth official, fifth official - whatever, the decision was correct. Which makes you think..... what the hell was Zidane thinking?
The obvious answer is that Materazzi said something unsavoury. I'd speculate, however, that it was all part of a master plan on the part of either Zidane or God himself.
Zidane understandably wanted to go down in history after participating in a stonking World Cup Final - scoring twice against Brazil just wasn't enough. 110 minutes in, and the match is heading to pens; he's feeling a bit nervous about the prospect of taking one after his moment of good fortune earlier, and besides, it's only the Italians - when have they ever been good at taking penalties? France will prevail without their captain, thinks their captain. Now is the time to make an indelible mark on the game. Have it.
Or God, and the God theory is a bit more entertaining. God was apparently the reason Zidane returned to international football, but the specifics of his celestial visitation have remained shrouded in secrecy - until now.
God appeared to Zizou at the foot of his bed, wearing a Platini shirt and holding a photograph in his hand:
That's right - the foul on Malouda, the penalty, the equaliser, the sending off - all were parts of the continuing fight between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil.
This half-baked theory is a bit more Dan Brown than I'd care for but the evidence is simply undeniable.
While I don't want to link Materazzi to the Devil (not explicitly, anyway - though I'm sure Rob might) the manner of Nesta's unfortunate injury and Materazzi's subsequent promotion and success do scream out: PACT! He was number 23, for crying out loud - only just made the squad...
And do you not think it odd just how holy and monk-like Zidane has become throughout his life as a footballer? Finishing his career playing for a team dressed head-to-toe in white, and then encouraging Les Bleus to do likewise for most of the World Cup (he was shit in blue, you'll remember)? Playing for a non-managing manager whose name just so happens to be a cunning anagram of "RD: a code hymn omen"? There's something a-brewing, something conspiracy-like - why the use of Peter Kay's Amarillo song at an international sports event such as last night, for example. Why? And how was it at no. 1 for so long? It also cropped up at Wimbledon in the background. This is big, very big. Just how did Nadal get such rippling biceps? I'm thinking Bad Wolf, I'm thinking Torchwood. Jim Rosenthal is probably involved somehow, too.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway, I've obviously been watching too much Dr. Who.
In other news: Simone Perrotta's actual function was finally revealed, courtesy of an insightful text from my brother. It seems that, along with the non-tackling holding midfielder, another new position has been born of this World Cup: the wide midfielder who neither defends nor attacks - indeed, the wide midfielder who has no discernible function other than to tuck in and allow his full-back to attack. At last, I have found my niche in international football - drop Joe Cole, get Ashley back to full fitness and I'm sure I can prove most adept at threatening to break into the opposition half, before retreating to the half-way line, before threatening to get back and defend, before advancing to the half-way line. If it works for the World Champions then it can bloody well work for us. Get McClaren on the blower now.
Camoranesi also made me sit up and take notice of his existence - albeit after the shoot-out - by taking part in an obviously pre-planed post-match ritual which was part team bonding, part Lord of the Flies: on a chair surrounded by his manic team-mates, his pony tail was ceremoniously lopped off. This new shorn style, of course, excludes him from the blog's Pirates XI (which only has about half a team anyway - maybe we should just get a 5-a-side team together) thus leaving a vacancy for a slightly overrated but energetic right-winger with the odd great touch and the odd piece of dodgy distribution. Thank goodness, then, for Franck 'Scarface' Ribery - as Rob pointed out, those scars aren't from a car crash, they're from Fabien Barthez's cutlass.
Good penalties, by the way - Italy showed all nations who consider themselves shit ("unlucky") at penalties precisely how to do it. (Get McClaren on the blowe....) Totti's ignominious performance and exit midway through the second half meant that the Italian Golden Boy on-field at the end was Del Piero (pictured) whose penalty was as assured as his team-mates.
Ok, with that final lookalike shoe-horned in, that about does it from me. My plan is to get back on here at some point this week and do a best/worst list - anything to keep the World Cup in my head for a bit longer, it seems. But then maybe I won't, maybe it's best just to let the whole thing go. If that turns out to be the case, then it's been a lot of fun to write this thing and maybe four years down the line we could do it again, only with a decent lay-out and people paying us. Yeah.
Cheers - Rob, hit the lights on your way out.