Italy just dismantled Ukraine. Some great set pieces with cool clean finishes by Luca Toni. Zambrotta performed magnificently on both ends. Keeping a sure goal by Andriy Gusin out of the goal line and then running down the left flank, catching the Ukraine defence on the wrong foot and sending a precise pass that split two defenders, onto Toni who just had to tap the ball in.
Ukraine’s luck ran out. There were a couple of chances they were distinctly unlucky not to score off and fantastic reflexive goalkeeping by Buffon.
So it is the Azzurri against the Mannschaft.
The storyline can’t get more compelling. A team with players that play for a league that is going through the worst scandal in its soccer history, with a tragic human component in Gianluca Pessotto is going to play a team that about 10% of that country’s population had given a chance to get out of the first round. The Azzurris hope to lift up their tarnished soccer image from the doldrums and the Mannschaft are giving back a sense of pride and joy to a people too trapped in their place in history to celebrate in any overt sense.
Marcelo Lippi looks like a Cambridge don, stoic and stodgy compared to his German counterpart, Jurgen Klinsmann who shows unbridled and childlike delight at his team’s success. It is infectious. In between there are glimpses of Der Kaiser who has not cracked a smile and gives us an idea of what German soccer used to be like. And the consensus is that we overwhelmingly like the new version.
It was enough to see Angela Merkel doing a little celebratory jig at the German victory to see that the Germans are finally enjoying this World Cup. And Frings little charade of acting out a bowling ball striking out all 10 players was kind of funny. Not uproariously so, but it was touching.