PART 2 - THE WORLD CUP FINAL

Nothing beats a last minute, ill planned and overly ambitious trip overseas. Especially a trip that involves an extra and rather stupid financial risk over which one has no control...

MILAN AND NORTHERN ITALY 9^th –11^th JULY 2006

THE AIM???

Well, the aim was simple – To crown my month long gamble fest based around the World Cup (see part 1), I decided it best to be in Italy for the Final. I had a hunch and a largish bet that Italy would win and IF they did, I wanted to be there to enjoy/soak up and experience the more than vivid atmosphere that would surely follow...

Perhaps this makes me to be some kind of glory hunter and perhaps I am. But in this situation at least, I had extenuating circumstances. I might not be Italian, but Princess Paola is, and her vague memory of everyone feeling good in 1982 as a result of Italys only non fixed World Cup win was intriguing….

You see for my money, in such a dark and cynical world as this, nothing beats enthusiasm and optimism for life and for some reason Italians appear to have both in abundance. Yes boss, even at the worst of times all the Italians I've met love to smile and compete. They're often loud, excited and vivacious when discussing their journey to work, let alone anything else - yet they don't need to drink or take drugs to get any of this....

So, if 'exuberant and excitable' was the standard and the norm on a cold Wednesday in Autumn - Just how would they be if they won the World Cup in the middle of summer in a year that few picked them to win???? Would the whole country just erupt and topple into the Med with pure excitement?? Furthermore, would I be able to pretend I was Italian and therefore get into it all as if it really meant something to me personally purely because I’d was set to win a sum of cash on the result, or would I be forced to simply stand around like a doped observer robot, peering in at the celebrations with typical English restraint, contempt and jealousy??

It was clearly something I needed to find out...

2

So, our plan was loose - very loose. Indeed, other than a pair of flights from Luton to Bergamo departing at 6.20am on the day of the game, we had no distinct regime or order with which to deal with events...

Ideally we wanted to get to Rome. Rome is my favourite Italian city and probably my favourite world city thus far – at least on aesthethic grounds. But Rome would take up extra time. Milan was much closer and was also somewhere we hadn’t yet visited and therefore perfect for a short taster trip…

So, Milan it was. And we left Fish Island at around 2am..This meant no sleep at all for the first night. Indeed for the next 3 days, sleep would have to bought and sold like a bond: An hour here, would have to be doubled then sold on before it collapsed. An hour there, trebled and flogged sharpish. Great profits would have to be made from very little capital investment and any deficit or deceit would have to replaced by coffee, excitement and booze.

3

BALDNESS IS THE KEY

Now, one of the things I love most about Italian men apart from their enthusiasm for life, is their ability to make baldness look good.. I'm especially grateful for this attribute, because when my hair started falling out 4 years ago, I found myself hanging around with 2 bald Italians who wore it well and this gave me some belief I could do likewsie...

I first met Aldo the same day i first met PP. We were all in a pub called the Black Bull on Whitechapel Road in London - It was New Years Days 2003 and I was looking for SOMETHING.. I found it, or at least I think I did. I also watched 2 games of football and ended up in my local, at around 3am, dancing badly and trying to pull...

It was of course an act of determined desperation, I mean it's obvious only desperate people go out drinking on New Years Day. But, I won’t go into details except to say that Aldo has since returned home to Bergamo and it was him who met us off the plane and who, with characteristic Italian flare, drove us at considerable speed to his village. I still don't know the name of this village. All I know is it had wonderfully musical bells on it's church, a lot of people rode bikes very slowly as if they were a part of the opening titles of Blue Velvet, and when we were there it held a fantastically hot climate.

4

THE BUSINESS

Now this was of course a working holiday. Indeed, those of you who read Pt 1 will know that after making a fantastic gambling start to the 2006 World Cup, including running up a profit of more than 200%, I slipped like a golden fool into a bad patch from which prior to the final I’d only just emerged. Yes boss, when I left you, I was feeling battered and bruised and wondering whether I was stupid or inspired enough to go all in on with my one hundred and thirty odd quid remaining onto Italy to win or simply play lower and safer….

Well, sorry if this disappoints you with it’s conservatism and general lack of rock n roll putsch, but I did the latter. Of course the big profits possible by going all in were very tempting, but the problem was I’d just had two weeks of suffering at the hands of teams I cared little about and I wanted to have 100 pounds left at the very least to waste on something other than 22 idiots kicking a ball around - like 190 other idiots cycling around France.

So, I put the £36 on Iatly to win, kept the hundred in the kitty for the rest of the Tour De Farce and figured I was onto a winner…That was unless France won the game.

5

MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO AROUND

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here….

Milan was more or less as we expected – A little serious, dull and unremarkable when compared with the likes of Venice and Rome, but it was none the less Italy, and it was fucking hot, and having checked into our hotel, we fitted in a quick hours sleep, before heading into the centre to find the big screen and general razamatazz….

We found the screen next to the Duomo – The Cathedral. There was just one modest sized affair and around it were a few thousand people with flags and best of all – twenty or thirty enterprising immigrants selling beer out of iced buckets.

Now, I love the European approach to living: I love the greater emphasis on family and friends and the different and lesser value on the importance of money. Indeed, the lack of commercialism that surrounds sport and general day to day life in Europe is absolutely fucking fantastic.

This certainly counts for sport. Indeed, most European sports haven’t really got their head around just how much cash you can charge for sport, or how much logonised crap you can sell to sports fans in the name of loyalty, support and merchandising.

For example, Paris Roubaix, a 100 year old classic bicycle race, is probably the most important and spectacular one day race in the world. It's followed by millions the world over because it’s an extreme and rather ridiculous test of masochism.

Yes boss, there are few more demanding ways to spend a Sunday than by riding a Paris Roubaix. After more than 200 kilometers of very hard racing over cobbles and small and very rough country roads, the race ends in a Velodrome in the former industrial heartland of Roubaix. Upon arrival, the riders quite often look as if they’ve been cycling through a swamp for 3 days.

Anyway, you can bet your life that if this event was in the US or UK, tickets for the Velodrome finale would be like gold dust and they would cost a packet. In Northern France they don’t cost shit. Futhermore, you can come and go whilst you wait without being bothered by security guards checking your bag for bombs or beer that isn’t that of the sponsors. Merchandising of any kind is also next to impossible to find. The focus remains on the sport, the sport and the sport and that’s the way it should be…

The only disadvantage to all this lack of commerce is that forward planning is required with alcohol and food.

I mean, I’ve been in France, the day before the biggest bike race of them all, the Tour De France comes along, together with it’s attendant tens of thousands of fans and I've not been able to find an open bar, let alone an off licence…..

It was exactly as we were approaching the Duomo that I remembered this was the case and it was then that I began to panic. Where the hell could I get a few beers? Fuck: I was English and I was abroad surely I needed beer!! Shit! It was a Sunday!! Everyone would be at home with the extended family, eating Pasta and watching the football - nothing would be open. How the hell could we be carrying on watching a game like this without a drink or two??

Well, thank god for the immigrants selling beer!!

6

PLAY

So, as you probably know, the game itself featured two teams who no-one really saw as being finalists at the beginning of the tournament. Indeed, like England, both France and Italy’s early group stage form had looked to be nothing special at all: The French had dithered and argued amongst themselves and Italy had got far too involved with the fine art of elbows and professional fouls to look like a serious challenge for the GC.

However, unlike England, both France and Italy managed to raise the pedal revs and win the games when it mattered. Fancied teams like Argentina, perennial favourites Brazil and even hosts Germany were thought to be far stronger and more complete, yet none of them made it.

So, on paper it looked like a tight and closely fought match and it was – Or at least it looked that way from where we were stood, but the truth was, we couldn't see a hell of a lot. You see, there was no graded seating, or natural slope in central Milan so vantage points were tricky. My near 6ft frame could get by, but PPs 5ft 3 one struggled to see above the crowd.

But did it matter? The excitement?? What about the excitement on the ground??

Well, for the most part the crowd was strangely unremarkable during that first 45 minutes. Sure there was plenty of flag waving, but there wasn’t the boisterous singing you might get in the UK. In fact it was all a little quiet and it became quite literally deathly silent in between the scoring of the French goal and the Italian one. It was so quiet, that I felt an obligation to start the singing myself. Of course I didn’t on account of being chickenshit, but someone had to start something and they did….That someone was Marco Materazzi…

7

HALF TIME - PLAY IT AGAIN

Once the second half kicked off, I felt glad i'd not gone all in..France were having the better of the possession and Italy’s creative accuracy and inspiration was running dry. What’s more the immigrants were running out of beer and I was running out of money.

Extra time added to all these woes. The Italian midfield just wasn’t threading the ball through well enough. Totti was non existent and then he was off, shaking his head, and France looked to be more committed, to want it more, to have the energy and the strength and the desire – Was it to be a repeat of the Euro 2000 final?? Were Italy going to fuck it up?

Jesus. I might not have stacked the full £130 on it, but a £30 loss would still leave me down on the tournament and leave my whole experiment in euphoria and Italian national character in tatters.

8

ON YOUR HEAD SON!

So, just as France were getting it more and more together, Marco Materazzi made the second of his 3 great impacts on the game.

To this day no-one appears to know exactly what he said to induce that ram from Zidane, but it’s clear Italy knew enough about the Algerian to push his buttons. 10 minutes earlier, Buffon had been giving the worlds greatest footballer some of his charms, but that time Zidane settled for spitting in the opposite direction. When Materazzi added in his small change, Zidane lost it and his career was over, France were down to ten and from that point on Italy always looked like the winners

9

THE CROWD GOES WILD

So, as you can imagine, when that last penalty went in, the place erupted. People were running about kicking and screaming at everything they could kick and scream at. They did however do it in a nice continental way - it didn't feel like violence. FIREWORKS BANGED. Traffic was at a standstill and cars were mobbed. Car stereos BOOMING. Mopeds with 2 or 3 or 4 people on screeching here there and everywhere, skidding and flag waving. And big flags and the noise of straight and unbridled joyful euphoria. CONSTANT HORNS. HAPPY JUBILATION AND JOY!!! Replicas of the cup and flares and HORNS!!!! AND COMPLETE HAPPY CHAOS!!

It was all too much for the screen. It gave up minutes after the final whistle and to see the trophy lifted we crowded around a small TV on a hot dog stand.

And me? Well, I thought about screaming and running around as if Southampton had won the Champions League, but in the end, I just sat back and watched it all like a doped robot. Sure I’d won and Italy had won, but I felt flat, I was completely shagged out and couldn’t celebrate as if it were my own win, because it wasn’t.

10

THE END FOR NOW...

So, there endeth the World Cup for another 4 years and who’d have thought Italy would win or that some makeweight replacement for Nesta, who couldn’t get in at Everton would be the hero of the hour?

It was strange, but accurate. The 2006 World Cup was one marked by the no shows of the big names. Ronaldo was too fat, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney were injured, Ronaldinho and Beckham were off colour. There were no big star turns, instead it was once again proved that football is a team game - That goals by journeymen defenders can win big games.

We so often here of the big boys, the Zidanes and the Totti’s, but it’ s nearly always the Materazzis who call the shots in the crunch moments. Sure it’s the Zidanes who have the ideas, the flair and the skilled inspiration, but without Materazzi and his like we’d all be a bunch of bulls in a ring….