WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FINAL : Team Left With No Smiles--or Apologies : Italy: Players believe they finished second to none after losing championship on penalty kicks.

La commedia e finita.

The drama is ended, but it was the curtain that fell--not the sky--on Italy’s dream of a world soccer championship Sunday.

Two missed penalty kicks spelled the difference after a 120-minute standoff across a green field where the temperature reached 97 degrees.

It was an artificial end for an organic game, and if there were tears of frustration on the field, there were no apologies afterward by the Italians.

“We did everything we could. We have to accept the result with tranquillity,” Italian Coach Arrigo Sacchi said. “I would be happy to repeat the experience. We should not look for alibis. We failed at penalty kicks.”

There weren’t any smiles after the game, but no heads hanging either.

“A shootout is like a lottery. You never know who will win,” said Italian captain Franco Baresi, who, like Roberto Baggio, hit his shot over the net.

Waiting for the team bus, Baggio swept up his 4-year-old daughter and clutched her tight, playing kissing games, looking happier than he ever did on the field in USA ’94. Her baseball cap was on backward too.

Like the Brazilians who won, the Italians who lost are professionals. To have lost on the field might have hurt; to have lost on penalty kicks simply stung.

“We played 120 minutes, exhausted at the end of a long tournament. It’s a shame to end on penalty kicks like this,” midfielder Roberto Donadoni said. “Losing this way is sad, but I believe we come out of this game second to nobody.”

Said Brazilian goalkeeper Claudio Taffarel, a veteran of the Italian first division: “Of course a penalty-kick decision doesn’t mean that the best team will win. Nobody likes a penalty kick decision.”

The irony of a penalty-kick defeat was not lost on anybody in Italy, where a semifinal shootout against Argentina ended Italian championship hopes in Italia ’90.

“There has to be a world champion, or else we would have tied. We have to accept the rules with a great serenity. But today I felt we played a championships caliber match,” Sacchi said. “When I am old I can say that I lost the championship on penalty kicks.”

Baresi, who returned from a leg injury as part of a stout Italian defense that again and again frustrated Brazil with some of the best individual play of the day, left the game with cramps a few minutes before the end.

He returned to kick Italy’s first penalty shot because Sacchi asked him to.

“The few times we have gone to penalties, he was the first one to shoot,” Sacchi explained.

Although Italy lacked the flair of its last two games against Spain and Bulgaria, Sacchi thought his Azzurri played even against the pressing Brazilians: “A very balanced match that could have gone either way,” he said.

In a way, Italy’s defeat was far less dramatic than the last-gasp victories that brought it as far as the Rose Bowl Sunday. Among the pre-Cup favorites for its heritage and the quality of its players, the Italian team stuttered under Sacchi.

It qualified for USA ’94 with great difficulty and then played indifferently in the first round, finishing third in a division the Italians expected to win. In second-round play and the quarterfinals, it took last-minute operatics by Baggio to get past Nigeria and Spain before a semifinal breather against Bulgaria.

“We almost seemed destined to end up like this, in a penalty shootout. To lose this way is disappointing, to miss so many,” said goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca, who stopped the first penalty shot against him but was beaten by the next three.

Said Donadoni: “I never thought anyone would miss. Bad luck.”

“I was there in body and spirit for the penalty. I don’t know why I sent it over,” Baggio said.

Even in defeat, Sacchi, a coach who thrives on unpredictability has made believers of his hyper-critical countrymen. Early in the tournament, more than 80% of them were telling pollsters he should be fired.

Now, though, Italy can return with honor and the prospect of more demanding innovation from Sacchi, whose contract lasts another two years.

As the Italians filed thoughtfully from the stadium Sunday, fullback Antonio Benarrivo wrote the epitaph: “We’re not bad. We’re good. We showed our class. Tomorrow we start anew.”