Brad

When they write the history of football and look at the pantheon of heroes, Zidane's will rank up with the great names (although slightly tarnished by this incident) whereas Matarazzi will only be remembered for his one goal and his attempts to bring Zidane down.

Nobody is denying that the trophy is in Italy! I am afraid ' winning at all cost' is not my motto. If winning is everything to you and if you are happy with this scenario, whatever Materazzi said, I don't envy your life and your world cup! I am sure I won't be the only board member to feel like this. Anyway, we are going to know much more about the virtues of Italian football in the coming weeks and a lot of the guys who won last night are very likely to be implicated in this scandal. But who cares? The trophy is in Italy!! A tainted trophy in my view.

I think this accurately summarizes the issues. Zidane had complained all night about these tactics. At one point he had to be helped off the field because it appeared he couldn't move his elbow. Gee, I wonder how that happened. Allegedly, Italian football had changed. I can't say I saw that as this side was involved with two of the more notorious incidents of this Cup: the McBride incident and now this.

BBC Phil McNulty on our Marco

Thank you for your great objectivity and contribution to this debate.

Those clips say it all. I saw something where his son gets abuse at school for the hits his father perpetrates.

I read where there was a fifth official in the booth looking at a monitor. However, he has no power to make any decision. I'm surmising that he looked at his monitor, saw the foul, called down to the fourth official, who then told the referee's assistant, who then told the refereee. If FIFA does not use video evidence, why is there a fifth official even looking at a monitor. To say he doesn't have any power to make a decision is not logical because he's relaying information down to the sidelines. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable with the FIFA rules can set this straight.

According to FIFA, they were sorting things out, that's why it took so long to eject Zidane. What a lot of crap. This is deplorable. Even Lippi said they were using video evidence. How can you change the rules in mid stream. There are a lot of things that go on in matches that refs don't see. This was obviously one. It shouldn't have been called. And this doesn't even get into the question of how the defense was manhandling him, nearly breaking his arm on one play. Matarazzo needs to be called to account by FIFA for what he said. This is a tainted championship.

I wonder if his father was a (first) bass (man)

These are all top notch. I would buy them all if I didn't already have them in some format.

I guess when you get down to it, Jim, the result of it all is very unsatisying, sort of like this whole Cup.

Not necessarily. A PK has to be awarded according to the subjective judgement of a man who may or may not even have a good look at the play. I'm just not yet convinced that the PK was deserved. I don't know, Brad. Was Italy's goal a "break"? Sure, Zidane may have made a difference if he'd stayed on, but nobody knows. France certainly played well overall, I guess I'm just trying to give Italy a bit of credit where I think it's deserved (at least to some degree). What I meant by breaks was Zindane's headbutt and Trezeguet's miss. Their goal was certainly not a break but a great header. Italy does need to get credit because they are the Champs. They won so that entitles them to the credit.

Your premise seems that they deserved to win because they scored a legitimate goal as opposed to the France PK. A PK is just as legitimate as a non PK goal. In fact, this was a more deserving PK, imo, than the one in the Portugal match. Looking at the game overall, Italy had some moments on offense in the first half but after that it was all France. They were constantly on the attack, looking for the tie breaker. They were making younger men look bad. However, not always the best team wins. You need to get breaks. Italy got them, helped by Zidane and they won. End of story.

Back to the match and the headbutt. This is what Domenech said, as reported in the BBC: France coach Raymond Domenech said the referee should have given Zinedine Zidane more protection in the World Cup final defeat against Italy in Berlin. Zidane was sent off in extra-time for a head-butt on Marco Materazzi before France went on to lose on penalties. "Materrazzi is the man of the match, not Andrea Pirlo," said Domenech. "When one has to put up with what Zidane had to and the referee doesn't do anything, one understands. You can't excuse it, but you can understand it."

What is your problem?? As far as I know no one mentioned any of those things, whereas your comments are rude and insulting. Actually I haven't got any problems: some of your past comments about italians edged the trivials commonplaces about us: 'divers', 'catenaccio', 'typical italian playing', ecc.. The party goes on right on so who cares... You've got to be kidding me. That's what you're getting upset about. Sheez. If somebody had said derogatory about the Italian people, I could understand your feeling upset but not for those comments about how your countrymen play football.

As far as Zidane costing them the title, it's arguable but he would have been taking one of the penalties so who knows? It's unfortunate, win or lose, that he went out that way. That headbutt will go down in World Cup lore and provoke unceasing debate as to whether France would have won or lost had he not done that.

I said they didn't deserve it because France played much better over the whole game and you can't deny that. I'm not looking down on you or Italy just looking at who played better. However, as we all know just because you play better doesn't guarantee a win and that's what happened here.

They didn't deserve it but that's irrelevant. They're the Champions. Zidane's headbutt may have cost them the title.

Unbelieveable. You have to keep your head. A headbutt worthy of American football. Penalties. It had to come to this, I'm afraid. Not a feeling to make Italian supporters happy, I'm sure.

Towards the end of time, Italians looked a bit disorganized in the back. France has been the better side in the second half but to no avail. I would think that exhaustion may be setting in.

Definitely.

With less than 15 minutes to go, Shakira seemed to get the crowd fired up. Of course, that's probably not too hard either

I frankly don't know who will win but I hope it's just a good match. Over on the BBC, Marcel Desailly said "I'm a bit disappointed about Italy. They don't really deserve to be in the World Cup final because they have shown only 45 minutes of good football, in the second half of their semi-final against Germany." I'm not sure I really believe that but they did get a gift against Australia and Ukraine was one of the worst quarterfinalists. However, their defense has obviously shone so I have no idea who will be favored. If it's hot, France will need to score in the first half or early in the second to win because some of their players might run out of gas. Again, who knows? Let's just hope it's entertaining as I agree with Hans that this has not been the most entertaining Cup.

Those were two beauties by Schweinstieger. Someone from Germany asked me if I would like Klinsman to be the US coach? I replied only if I could have some of the German players.