It was supposed to be the greatest show on earth and billions eagerly awaited the show-down between France and Italy to decide who would be the winners of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. And there was even one Hindu player, Vikash Dhorasoo, in the French squad with the chance to win the World Cup. Instead the whole tournament will be remembered for a moment of violent madness from another Frenchman, Zinedine Zidane. Before and even during the tournament, the French had been written off as too old and past-it to win. Not only that, but Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front, had used the fact that France weren’t expected to perform well to abuse the French players. During their disappointing early performances he made speeches saying how the French team did not really represent France since they had so many non-white players and were captained by Zidane who is of Berber origin. However, it was Zidane who came good for the French and with his goals and inspirational performances to silence the critics and Le Pen and lead his team into the final.

Italian football too was under a cloud before the start of the tournament with a match-fixing scandal involving the top clubs in Italy. With the psychological effect of the cloud of relegation and the lack of a real star player meant that many had written off the Italian team’s chances of winning the World Cup. But football is never predictable and it was Fabio Cannavaro who lifted the cup on July 8 to the massive joy of country that always expects great things from its team. Massive street parties and processions greeted the Italians on the return home but then reality quickly hit home with the relegation and deduction of points of all the big four teams accused in the match fixing scandal. Currently the news columns are full of speculation of all the star players leaving to better teams.

England’s world cup was pretty tame with victories over two no hopers (with due respect to Paraguay and Trinidad & Tobago) and a draw with a weak Sweden side in the first round. Probably England’s best game was the two nil victory over Ecuador but even that hardly set the world alight. Portugal was the first serious team that David Beckham’s team came up against. To be fair, injuries and squad selection played their part in restricting England’s tactics and abilities but even the frustration caused by that was no excuse for Wayne Rooney’s violent conduct in the quarter final. As always England eventually got knocked out on penalties and we all had to throw our George’s crosses away or save them for two years time.

However, Rooney’s stamping of an opponent between the legs turned out to be the rule rather than an exception for this world cup. There were a record number of red cards and violent clashes from the Argentinean team when they got knocked out by Germany, a four match ban for Rossi of Italy for elbowing, a fest of red cards between Portugal and Holland, an unpunished headbutt from the great Figo and of course Zidane’s headbutt in the final. Add that to the constant diving we saw in this tournament and you don’t really send out a great message to the millions of children watching.

Zidane of course is of Berber (Algerian) decent and initial suggestions were that Materazzi had made racist comments to him but it later transpired that he sledged Zidane about his family. Interestingly FIFA seem to have messed up their punishment too as they have banned both players from international games. Zidane retired at the end of the world cup and so will never get a chance to serve out that ban. Materazzi on the other hand will miss games for Italy. The thought is understandable – that sledging will no longer be tolerated in international football. But the message is a very bad one as the only reason people even care about what was said was because of the violent conduct of which Materazzi was a victim. Again, is this what we really want to be teaching kids?

The football itself was patchy. Germany were excellent hosts and this was one of the best venues for a World Cup. The team too lit up the tournament with their attacking and daring football and ended up as the tournament’s top scorers. Argentina had the distinction of scoring the best two goals of the tournament but then let themselves after they lost to Germany. Brazil were probably the biggest disappointment even though they only conceded two goals and broke the record for most consecutive wins, beating all comers until the quarter finals. It was there that they came up against an inspired French team and couldn’t muster up a response to skill and trickery of Zidane. At the end of the game the Brazilian players shook Zidane’s hand in acknowledgement of how he had out-Braziled Brazil. The Italians however were probably the best team in the later stages of the cup. While they never caught the imagination of the neutrals they did go from strength to strength and built on their solid defence with some displays of excellent attacking football. In many ways it was a very un-Italian progression to the final.

In terms of overall quality the two semi finals were quite high but both lacked a real sense of drama. Despite being goalless for almost two hours the Germany – Italy semi displayed quite a bit of attacking football and we saw two excellent goals in the last two minutes of extra-time. The France – Portugal semi was won with a Zidane penalty and characterised by a French determination to hold on and not be beaten. Everyone expected a dull final but the first half turned out to be quite eventful with another Zidane penalty (making him only the forth man to score in different finals and only the forth to score three goals in biggest game any footballer can ever play) and a well taken header by Materazzi. After that it was largely the French who attacked and they looked the better team while the Italians seemed to be content with keeping things level and maybe sneaking one towards the end as the French tired. That didn’t happen and the match was eventually decided on penalties. Before that of course there was the one piece of action that will be remembered forever, the sight of the greatest player of this generation walking past the World Cup in disgrace. Embarrassingly for FIFA it turned out to be too late to affect the vote for the Golden Ball – Zinedine Zidane was not allowed to collect his runner’s up medal but ended up winning the award for the best player in the whole tournament. So in his own way, he still had the last word.