Italy, France Take Soccer Stage Again
Two months after Italy beat France in their epic World Cup final at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the two rivals square off on the soccer field again today at the Stade de France in Paris.
The game is anything but a friendly. It is a key qualifying match for the 2008 European Championship.
Neither Zinedine Zidane nor Marco Materazzi will be involved, but just because the two principals in the Great Head-butt Drama of 2006 are absent does not mean the game will be all sweetness and light.
“Of course I expect an explosive encounter,” German referee Herbert Handel, who will be in charge of the match, told Agence France-Presse.
France’s Zidane has retired, his final steps on the soccer field being the slow trudge to the locker room after he was tossed out of the final for head-butting Materazzi in the chest following a verbal altercation.
The Italian will be serving the second game of a two-game suspension for his role in that infamous incident July 9, when Italy claimed its fourth World Cup, 5-3 on penalty kicks after a 1-1 tie.
On Tuesday, for the first time, Materazzi provided his side of the story. “I did not provoke him, I responded verbally to a provocation,” Materazzi told Italy’s Gazetta dello Sport newspaper.
“We both spoke, and I wasn’t the first. I held his jersey, but don’t you think it’s a provocation to say that, ‘If you want, I’ll give you the jersey later.’ ”
“I replied to Zidane that I preferred his sister, that is true. I brought up his sister, and that wasn’t a nice thing, that is true.”
Materazzi added that, “much worse things” frequently are said by players during games.
“He has not apologized to me and I certainly don’t have to apologize to him,” Materazzi said. “If anything, I owe apologies to his sister, although, I swear, before all this mess I didn’t even know Zidane had a sister.”
It is against this backdrop that Les Bleus and the Azzurri will take the field at the Stade de France, where France won the 1998 World Cup.
France Coach Raymond Domenech has kept his World Cup squad virtually intact, the only major changes being caused by Zidane’s retirement and the replacement of starting goalkeeper Fabien Barthez with understudy Gregory Coupet. Italy has had to experiment more, and nine of its World Cup players, including the talismanic Francesco Totti, will be absent today.
In the build-up to today’s match, some have tried to downplay the rivalry, but not Italian midfielder Gennaro Gattuso, who recalled France’s victory over Italy in the 2000 European Championship.
“When we lost Euro 2000, 10 seconds from the end, we didn’t go around moaning about it afterwards,” Gattuso said in Florence on Monday, responding to French defender Lilian Thuram’s earlier claim that in Berlin “the best team on the night didn’t win.”
Added Gattuso: “I know we usually complain after losses, but they do it even more. Italy is second to France in that.”
Meanwhile, Domenech has called for calm, asking fans to show Italy respect.
“I really hope the French public will respect the Italians and not whistle them during their national anthem,” he said. “The Italians deserve to be applauded, at the beginning at least. After that, if we jeer our opponents during the match, that doesn’t bother me.”
France won its opening Euro 2008 qualifier, 3-0, on the road at Georgia on Saturday while world champion Italy, under new Coach Roberto Donadoni, was held to a surprise 1-1 tie at Naples by Lithuania.
Also in the qualifying group are Scotland, Ukraine and the Faroe Islands.
“It is clear that it’s a special match,” said Donadoni, who took over from Marcello Lippi after the World Cup. “Obviously, France will want to show their strength at home ... [but] it’s too early to say it will be decisive.”
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