the sporting life

World Cup Wrap Up


Why Not Italy?

So the Italians to win, a fitting and logical end. Because much was lined up favorably for the azzurri: a supremely hot goalkeeper, a balanced roster relatively injury/suspension free, and an easy bracket presenting only Australia and Ukraine in their path to the semifinal. Which isn't to say they didn't deserve this final, as say, the Germans certainly didn't in 2002. Italy proved their mettle. Before the games even began, some of the hugest Italian League clubs, employers of 13 of 23 national team members, became roiled in a gargantuan scandal of unimaginable scale. Once underway, they handled a difficult group stage with surprising ease, they stared down the hosts in a pressure filled extra time match, and they did lose Alessandro Nesta, (a defender so revered that Pele named him as all Brazil needed to be assured of winning) in the middle of the tournament, the sort of injury that would have shaken many teams. Italy, though, never lacking for quality defenders, didn't miss a beat and kept rolling, despite FIFA's ludicrous rules forbidding any injury replacement to the roster once the Cup has begun. The Italians didn't back meekly into this championship, as other more defense-fetishized Italian teams might have.

Ah, but the Italians and their diving, the horrible, soul-wretching, ignoble fairy-fluffing that sends shocks of revulsion through every American viewer! Especially this time, with the refereeing already poised teetering on razor's edge, real advantage was gained through questionable penalty calls. And no team took hold of that advantage like Italy. But guess what:

It's not Italy's fault. It's FIFA's. It's soccer's. THOSE ARE THE RULES. As long as teams win games, countries win Cups with flopping, then of course it's how the game will be played, who's gonna tell them to stop? What glory, what honor in losing to prove some self-righteous point that the sport doesn't recognize as important? The card system encourages cheating, REWARDS cheating, and as long as that's the reality, then who's to blame the teams that play it the best? Until there're multiple refs to kill the need for calls made 40 yards from a play, until there's a sensible penalty box suspension-only-for-fighting policy, and bite my toungue, until there's (gasp) instant replay, I don't want to hear another word. Because until then, flopping IS soccer, and that's just how it is.

The Italian style may have its aesthetic critics, but there is a brutal beauty to it. And though the final was anything but decisive, their tournament-long play merited reward, and what's more, 2006 was just Their Turn.

Because sports flow to a cogent current, with discernible patterns and eddys. Balance is only achieved when rings and trophies are distributed in a logical order. I don't care who's playing best right this second, I'm usually dissapointed when the "hot" (read: "fluke") team wins. And who had Fair Claim to 2006?

Definitely not the Germans, for reasons I've laid out in a previous entry, but beyond the hosts many could make a case. Brazilian dominance has locked many countries out for long years, and I was initially hoping a new country would enter the circle of winners, like Portugal, the Czechs, or long overdue Holland. But previous winners Argentina and especially England would have both stirred the air with a fresh scent. Though this turned out to be a reaffirmation of Classical Football Order after the jarring upsets and chaos of 2002's "tournament of surprises", there is nothing stale about this result. Italy is one of soccer's great traditonal powers, but this is not a wearisome win. They have three Cups on the shelf already, yes, but two date from the Great Depression, and the last was more than 20 years ago. And hey; it doesn't say "Rossi" on the back of my shirt for nothing. Why not the Italians?


Players of the Tournament

Italy of course had many notable story lines. Gianluigi Buffon, alongside the Czech Republic's Petr Cech already considered the best keeper in the word, did nothing to alter that impression. In seven games he allowed only an unstoppable own-goal (I quite intentioanlly omit Zidane's score in the final; Look: penalty kicks do not count as goals, understood?) and leaves several unbelievable lights-out images, such as his extra time divine-intervention saves on Podolski against Germany and Zidane's laser-guided header in the final.

The strong play of midfielders Gattuso and Pirlo, teammates at Milan, drew deserved applause, and demonstrated the value of keeping together on the international stage players already familiar, with skills already honed to compliment each other. Pirlo, the fluid playmaker, and Gattuso, his strong tackling blue collar bodyguard, always seemed in the middle of Italy's crucial plays.

Francesco Totti, another creative instigator in the middle, aging and at the end of a fine career, brought to Germany the unique pressures of his jersey #10. There is no more prestigious number in soccer, Pele's number, Maradona's number, Ronaldinho's; it's the symbol of the leader of the attack, the distributer of the ball, the conducter of his team's symphony, and carries a grave weight. Totti, much like David Beckham, faced an uncertain legacy to a career sometimes great, sometimes just good, and the analysis of his Cup performance will go a far way toward settling his place in history. Totti cannot be said to have played that great a part in Italy's run, and was substituted out of the final after a quiet and ineffective game.

Ronaldinho's fall will be even more precipitous. Coming off a brilliant Champions League win for his domestic club Barcelona and two consecutive FIFA "World Player of the Year" awards, a sort of mvp for planet earth, the media had announced the arrival of a new legend, universally anointing him the world's best player, the Brazilian press wondering aloud if it was time to begin speaking of him in the same breath as Pele and Maradona, considered the two greatest to ever play the game. With Brazil an overwhelming favorite, a World Cup mvp seemed an entirely realistic possibility, even a liklihood. But amid the hype, their Stunning Loss to France was really not so stunning. Even Ghana had outplayed them consistently, for long stretches. Brazil's hyper-talented individuals never found a group rhythm, responsibilty for which must inescapably fall within the purview of your Number 10, to some degree at least. Ronaldinho has a Cup already, from 2002, but this was the first that was totally his, Brazil's undisputed core. It was a disaster. His performance and Brazil's in South Africa in 2010 will be either redemption or compounded failure, much as it was for Totti and Beckham this time round.

...How can a player be all but unknown internationally yet have ten World Cup goals? Germany's Miroslav Klose has found a way to do it. Add that to a breakout 25 goals in 26 games for Werder Bremen and one imagines it might be time for him to join the rest of us in the outside world, maybe with a big English or Spanish side. Ah, but those Germans, soo hard to pry out of Germany...............what a mess you've made, Cristiano Ronaldo. It's been no secret in England that he's a petulant, emasculate whiner, flipping and flopping about, unsatisfied just to rely on his considerable skills; now the world knows. Placed upon the greatest, most visible of global stages, Ronaldo's play was electrifying and his conduct was contemptible. By the time the tournament had reached the Third Place game, the usually convivial German crowd was booing him every time he touched the ball. In a typically whiny, fingerpointing statement, he accused his Manchester United employers of failing to stand by him during l'affaire Rooney and declared his desire to immediately move to Real Madrid. Given his behavior during the red carding of Rooney, his Man U teammate, and the unpredictable reception he'd get upon returning to Manchester, everyone'd be better off if the deal goes through..........count Ukraine's Andriy Shevchenko among the tarnished stars, failing to live up to his $60 million pound transfer fee bringing him to Chelsea this fall..........and count Argentina's 19 year old Lionel Messi among the stars enhanced. The failure to bring him on as a late substitute against Germany stands as the Argentine regret with the greatest staying power..........

..........About that Italian Scandal: Match-fixing, front office and league officials conspiring to place referees to team preference, Board of Trustees resigning en masse in shame, imagine all that. Imagine the Yankees being in on it. Now imagine the Yankees (and maybe the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Blue Jays) being sent down to the minor leagues as punishment. Imagine all their players, huge stars and role journeymen alike, suddenly released from their contracts and set loose in a flood on the free-agent market, while their historic teams face a who-knows-how-long struggle back to the majors with rosters filled with unknowns. Players the caliber of goal keeper Buffon and Italy's captain, defender Fabio Cannavaro, are suddenly up for grabs. The Yankees need only imagine; for Juventus it's very real..............

..........With the German threat safely removed, I've had a change of heart and reconsidered my attitude toward them. They have a wonderful team, full of energy, they played as a team as well as any, and they were entertaining as hell to watch. And as catalysts of an upswell in constructive, communal German pride, they played a wonderful role in presenting a model of Teutonic nationalism beyond racism. Hey; I love and respect Germany...it just wasn't their "TURN", capiche?..........


Oh, Zidane, Zidane, Zidane....

What to say of Zidane? What an invigorating, star crossed, bizarre final appearance for one of soccer's immortals. He was dexterous and present during the game, if not determinant, his weaving signature maneuvers worthy of the moment. But as in the 1998 final against Brazil, our lasting impressions of Zidane were not to come from his feet, but his head. His scathing header late in extra time, on an exquisitely conceived path toward the top of Buffon's goal, was of such quality and ferocity it seemed a destined Cup winner; only an instantly immortal flailing save from the Italian keeper at his very best pushed it just over the bar, and Zidane's emotional yell in reaction is one of his great on-field portraits. Then, soon after, came the shocking head butt.

Not seeing him on the podium to receive his medal was surreal and heartbreaking, a shame. I don't know who's decision it was to keep him in the locker room, but even if it was his, it was the wrong one. These were the closing moments of a World Cup Final, the very end of Zidane's illustrious career, momentous and historic. Players get carded all the time, especially this tournament, and though his was a foul more shameful than most, his absence served to amplify the import of the card and to press it deeper into the lore of the game than it deserves to be. What, one must ask, was the plan had France won? Would we have been presented with the catastrophically tragic image of the victorious French gathered to hoist the Cup without a captain? Without their captain?

Zidane cannot be said to have cost France this match. True, he did quell the momentum of a team at the time much the more aggressive side, taking it to the exhausted Italians. But with ten minutes left in extra time and both teams running on fumes, penalties seemed to be unavoidable even before he was sent off. Much more damaging were the cramps to both Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, two players France could hardly do without during the run of play, let alone penalty kicks. I don't care if Henry is limping around like he just came back from quail hunting with Dick Cheney, he stays. Going into penalties without Henry, Vieira, and Zidane is unthinkable.

Yet it wasn't some out-of-his-element defender to blink for France in the shootout; it was a stone-cold deadly striker, David Trezeguet. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which Zidane's presence changes anything. For France's superstitious coach Raymond Domenech, who left all Scorpios off his roster, it just wasn't in the cards.

Zidane's 2006 Cup is hard to fathom. His resurgence was key to France's sudden and thoroughly unexpected revival. He had only one transcendent game, but against Brazil when it was needed most. He contributed goals, but through penalties. He had magnificent moments against Italy, and his infraction hardly sunk France. His card was only of manageable emotional and psychological detriment to France and without genuine consequence, yet it will irresistably leave a lasting scar on his memory...though I suspect that as time passes it will increasingly seem a strange footnote, and little more.

This wasn't the first time Zidane's brash physicality got the best of him. Before becoming the hero of the 1998 final in Paris and Ascending to Greatness, he had been suspended during the same Cup for stomping on a prostrate Saudi. And his career includes 14 ejections, a fairly robust total. Maybe then this was the perfect exit for him, the perfect little encapsulation of all the delicate skill, the inspiring command, all the bullish affront. We saw all of Zidane in Berlin on Sunday, and we are left to take of it what we choose.

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...Enough with the fawning descriptions of young talent in soccer and tennis, of 20 year old "wonders" winning tournaments and scoring breathtaking goals. Look: When you enter a sport at 16 and are through by 30, 20 isn't "precocious"; it's right on schedule......


...Yes, the World Cup rightly celebrates itself as the only "true" world's championship, in that everyone, everywhere competes and takes it seriously. But, competitively speaking, the reality is that international soccer means only (Western) Europe, plus Brazil and Argentina, and no one else matters. Each tournament seems to produce one or two Asian/African honorary "global" representatives making the Round of 16 or, given an easy bracket, maybe the quarterfinals, but then they're quickly dispatched, thanked for coming, and the European grown-ups begin the "real" World Cup. I love soccer for it being one of the few things the whole planet truly has in common. But the Cup, still in its first century after all, remains in an adolescent state. Only when there're real Asian and African superpower teams balancing out the Old World, regularly challenging for the title, with the opportunity to share in the joy and ecstasy Italy is feeling now will this be a fully-realized mature event, only then will it really be a "world" cup...