10 July 2006

2006 World Cup Finals Breakdown

Filed under: Muses, News — launchpad @ 6:27 am

The 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany has just drawn to a close, Italy was victorious.

This was most certainly the best match of the season. A summary:

Italy vs France

1st half 1 - 1

2nd half 1 - 1

Extra time, 1st half 1 - 1

Extra time, 2nd half 1 - 1

Penalty shoot-out 5 - 3

First Half

The game started off with pretty rough play on Italy’s side, and it landed France a penalty kick on the 6th min. On the 18th min, Italy scored, by Materazzi, assisted by Pirlo (who, after this World Cup will increase his player value, because of the penalty shoot-out that happened later).

After that it was fairly good play with both sides trying to land goals to secure the World Cup until half time, with Italy having a higher ball possession. Italy held a very strong defense whenever the ball was near their goal, making it very hard for France to strike (which made Henry appear very low-profile in this game).

07 min - the first goal for France was a penalty kick by Zidane.
18 min - the first goal for Italy was scored by Materazzi.

Second Half

After the 10 minute break, both teams returned with more energy and it was rough play, fouls and a lot of free kicks for both sides. France had a higher ball possession and appeared determined to land themselves another goal, but as usual, Italy held very strong defense. It was like 3 white shirts to 9 blue shirts on the average, whenever the ball was on Italy’s side (the same ratio doesn’t apply when the ball was on France’s side, but nevertheless, they defended well).

It was obvious 15 minutes into the 2nd half that Italy wanted to play into extra time, since their team was younger and could outlast France in the overtime. There were 2 near-goals for France before the second half ended and you could tell Zidane was feeling the pinch of every near-goal (France badly wanted to end the game in the 90 minutes).

Extra Time

Very aggressive play and more near-goals for both France and Italy. Then in the second half of the extra time Zidane was sent out with a red card (109th minute).

What happened was, during the play, Zidane’s then marker, Materazzi, used his arms to restrict Zidane and whispered (said?) something to him. This upset him, and led to the head-butting incident. It was no ordinary headbutt for sure.

The behavior could not be tolerated, and once the referee confirmed it, Zidane was sent out with a red card. He was later reported to be crying in the changing room to be taken out of the game like that and let his team down.

Despite a 10-man team without Zidane and Henry, France did well to preserve the score (1 near-goal for Italy after Zidane left) and take the game into the penalty shoot-out.

Penalty Shoot-Out

France definitely had the upperhand with penalty shoot-outs, since they have won 3 out of 5 games that went into this stage, while Italy only won 1 out of 4 shoot-outs.

In the 2000 UEFA European Championships, France beat Italy, 2-1 with an extra-time golden goal by Trezeguet. But today, France lost the penalty shoot-out to Italy, 5-3, because Trezeguet hit the goal post instead. It was a terrible mistake, especially since France had a fantastic track record for penalty shoot-outs and despite being one of the world’s top goalkeepers, Italy’s Buffon kept diving in the wrong direction (at least France’s Barthez dived in the right direction some times).

It was a devastating loss for France.