Watching Zidane Get Red-carded...bad.

Watching Italy go on to win the World Cup...worse.

Listening to a bunch of drunk Italians partying the night away....the worst ever.

Italy has proven that they can take better penalty kicks than France when France's best penalty-taker is off the field. After having being dominated for the better part of 120 minutes. I guess that's something to celebrate, right?

Congratulations, Italy. Congrats to diving your way into the final - with particular note to the dive against Australia that saved you from an ignominious early exit.

I thought it was particularly ironic that at least one, and possibly two, Italians were the most-often-fouled players in the tournament. In this final, they were flopping all over the place - like fish out of water. When France striker Malouda was taken down a second time inside the Italian penalty area, there was no call. And this time there was no question - it was a simple takedown that deserved a simple penalty. Most of the papers so far have failed to point out that France dominated the match - instead, choosing to go with the 'obviously Italy were brilliant' storyline, even though Italy were just doing their best to reach penalties to have a shot at winning on the cheap. And there have been no mentions as of yet of Materazzi's holding Zidane in the penalty area as the ball was played in - this was what led to Zidane's head-butt of Materazzi. The holding should have been a penalty and red card, but we'll see if we're allowed to read that in the press. And Materazzi's goal - the head ball - he pushed down on his defenders's left shoulder with his right hand/arm - this is a $2 call - it gets called 10 times a game, but our referee chose not to call this one.

Bravo Italy! You suck!

:)

...so, the truth is slowly leaking out. On top of Materazzi holding onto Zidane, we have a titty twister and the terrorist insult.

As background, I attended a Rutgers soccer camp back in the day when Rutgers seemed to be a decent soccer school. We had a few big-name players there back in the day, and my claim to fame is that one of the camp couselors, Alexi Lalas, borrowed my shampoo. In any case, one of the other camp counselors was a former Italian striker. He relayed to us stories of how we should act on the field - doing anything and everything we can to get an advantage - no matter how dirty, shameful, unsportsmanlike, cheating, etc. He told us stories of how he'd hit, kick, pull, punch players from opposing teams just to get them thrown out when they swung back at him. He told us how he'd spit in a defender's face to achieve the same effect, and how it often worked - getting the opposing player thrown out when he retaliated. I remember looking around at other players in our circle at camp - we were all around 14 or 15 at the time - and we were just stunned. He was serious. Very serious. He was demanding that we become terrorists first, and soccer players second, and only if necessary. All of us players just stared at him like he was some crazy uncle. Little did we know he was absolutely serious and abolutely telling the truth.

Our crazy Italian camp counselor must have trained Materazzi, too. Materazzi has left his stain on the World Cup. He'll forever be remembered for terrorizing the game's greatest player in that tournament, until that player had finally had enough.