France 3, Italy Won

France had played with graceful passing, the confidence of experience, and with a team whose timing was sychronized. In particular, the "aging" Zinedine Zidane, 34, dazzled the world with his quick foot work, precision passing, and his controlled comportment. It was his soccer swan song. But even the greats sometimes show other sides of their character.With only 10 minutes left in overtime play, Zidane lost his control, and could not resist head-butting an opponent hard in the chest. For this he was ordered out of the game, and rightly so. But what a shocker. Of all people, he who could have went on to score one of the penalty shots.

France had the best control of the game, and it was so unfortunate for the rest of his team to suffer, and now wonder, would they have won had Zidane not behaved this way. Well it's history now, and what a historical event it was. The teams were tied 1-1 at the end of regulation time, and again after the half hour overtime, then came the penalty shots. But one French player failed to score, and Italia all over the world are on cloud nine. The final tally was Italy 5, France 3 in the shoot out.

Bob Lenarduzzi, a former Canadian soccer coach and professional player, believes Canada will again make it to the World Cup Soccer tournament. It will be in South Africa in 2010. That would be good to see, especially if any one of the talented players from NL were picked for the team. Some may think it's a long shot, but that's what upalong sports reporters thought of the Gushue rink too. In any case any prospective player with big dreams has four more years to practise and prepare.