What a great match! I had the opportunity to watch the match at Leo’s Place, which is a small restaurant in Johnstown, Colorado with Spanish announcers — which was fine because the language was soccer after all.
Italy played the better game, which frankly shocked me because France looked very impressive against Portugal. But the Italian football players might as well use their feet as their hands. Very agressive to the ball, while the French were very territorial, elbowing and punching at times through the Italian players. Zidane is a great football player on the ground. One-on-one, he cannot be stopped, and it looked as if France just might pull the game off in the latter parts of the match.
Until…
Zidane headbutted an Italian player in the chest in the fifth minute or so of second overtime, which earned him a red card and deprived France of their best shooter going into the shootout. What a shame — and it goes to show why cool reason trumps emotion every time. It was a silly thing to do, and it certainly made him and his national team look very poor.
Still, the Italians came out on top. Everyone to a man was rooting for the Italians here, and considering the Americans managed only to tie the Italians, I’d say that makes Team USA not so bad after all. USA came out of a tough bracket with the Czech Republic (thanks Jon), a surprisng Ghana team, and World Cup Champions Italy.
Good series, though I doubt it will do anything for US soccer in the short term. Still, as more of the 18-30 demographic starts coming of age, I’m sure we’ll keep rooting for the game we played as kids.