Ups and downs

A dream start and a masterpiece. A game that kept it's promise, with elegant, engaged play, even after that terrible header. Hope was the prevailing emotion, the French gamealways bringing danger to the Italians who concentrated on mounting a superb defense.Tension took its toll on my heart and my fingers, but still the show proved worth of a World Cup Final.

Then disaster struck when one of football's Gods lost his head, and in that one act put a dark mark on what should have been the consecration of 4 weeks of one of the greatest spectacles on earth. Then came the final blow, as the team wearing blue lifted the trophy, the men in white staring around in disbelief or openly crying. I didn't cry like I did 8 years ago. I just could not believe it...

That was 3 days ago, yet still it is still all around me. The excitement still runs through my veins, only to find that there is no match today. In spite of the loss I still feel really proud of those men that fought for me. And millions of others, but also in part for me. They were told too old and lacking in passion. Can anyone claim that now?

I wish that is all I could take from this, but the images haunt me. Images a man - yet more than a man? - running at another. Images of a missed penalty. And worst, images of everything that has been said since. Even as I speak, people are eagerly awaiting a speech from Zizou, rumours abunding of how Italy could be stripped of its title. What nonsense! Let the Italians celebrate their victory the way we surely would have celebrated ours. Let those regretable events not further stain what has been, by and large, a great World Cup.