The truth behind Italy not being awarded the 2012 European soccer championship? Well, I don’t have it written in stone, but I suspect the following happened: Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, and his “dauphin”, “Le Roi” himself, Michel Platini, probably didn’t terribly appreciate the fact that Marco Materazzi “à-la-italiana” provoked Zidane last summer during the Italy-France World Cup final in Germany into reacting and thus getting himself thrown out of that all-important match.
My soccer expert friends in Rome (who know a thing or two about soccer) said that Zidane that night was like a hot knife going thru butter with the Italian defence. The Italians appeared somewhat worried with the great French played on the pitch, until Materazzi came out with his string of insults directed at the Frenchman (Materazzi has never been known to be a saint in the Italian league). Having modestly played on defence for most of my youth, I can assure readers that a terrific player is always a son-of-a-bitch for ANY defender. With Zidane out of the match, it was certainly better for Cannavaro and Co. than having him IN the match, not to mention that the French ended up playing with 10 players vs. 11 Italians.
Blatter justified his absence from the awards ceremony by saying that he wanted to avoid the German president further embarrassment because with Blatter’s presence in the stadium fans had heckled him. B.S.! World Cups belong to FIFA and NOT to UEFA, so what the hell was UEFA’s president Johansson doing awarding Cannavaro the World Cup? ALL FIFA presidents have been present at the final of a World Cup match, including the women’s finals (I’ve also been present at a Women’s World Cup final, the one in 1999 at the Rose Bowl. THE happiest man on the podium that day wasn’t America’s captain Carla Overbeck but rather Blatter!). What I suspect happened is that both Blatter and Platini chased after Zidane right after the final whistle to ask him what the hell had happened and why the hell he had fallen for Materazzi’s taunts. It was in fact France which was to have won that World Cup title, not Italy. Had France won, the entire world press would have crowned Zidane the undisputed king of that event and in the long run would have given even MORE power to Platini, a probable successor to Blatter one day as president of FIFA (it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s now UEFA’s president).
Italy didn’t get the Euros because of stadium violence (one of the justifications by the Italian sports media)? Again b.s.! There had been stadium violence throughout the 1980s in Italy, and yet the nation was awarded the 1990 World Cup (which I got to work at. Buckets of money were wasted re-building decrepit stadia, not to mention some 25 workers who had died in the re-construction of these stadia). We can therefore say “grazie” to Marco Materazzi if some 800 million Euros worth of revenues have gone up in smoke as a result of Italy not getting the 2012 Euros. Congrats instead to the Poles and the Ukraines and may they put on a terrific show for all of us in Europe (including Italians)!
1 comment:
Hogwash .. first of all, Zidane was not "going through the Italian defense like a hot knife through butter". While playing well, he and the rest of the French team were limited to no goals, other than an extremely dubious penalty, and very few real chances.
Secondly, his departure with a couple minutes left had little, if any, influence on the match.
Even the penalty phase, in which he surely would have participated, was more than likely unaffacted by his absence. While he would no doubt have been one of the players to take a penalty, Trezeguet would certainly have remained one of the five and it was his miss that ended up being the determining factor. And this is assumning that Zidane would have scored his - he came awfully close to messing up his first chance!
Third, there is no way that Materazzi cost Italy 800 million euros. While the violence in today's game is comparable to that in the 80s, as Mario correctly points out, Italian soccer is in a state of enormously greater chaos than back then.
Not to mention that Materazzi made a substantal contribution to Italy's world cup winning campaign (he scored the equalizer in the final and scored one of the penalties for Italy, among other contributions). Indeed, the world cup has been estimated to earn the winning nation a 0.3% bump to GDP, which vastly surpasses any fanciful estimates of the loss of the Europan Championship.
Just my opinion - of course, I could be wrong ...
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