King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Italy wins the World Cup as French legend Zidane is sent off. Let's do the same to the penalty-kick shootout. Plus: The Twins' side-arming blogger.
Read more: Sports, France, Baseball, Italy, Soccer, World Cup, King Kaufman, Sports Daily, 2006 World Cup
July 10, 2006 | I wish the World Cup were still going on.
I don't mean I wish there were more games. I mean I wish the final between France and Italy were still going on, in the 2,053rd minute of extra time, exhausted players dragging themselves up and down the field until, finally, someone summons that last ounce of energy to make the steal, the pass or the run that leads to the golden goal.
As fantastic as the 2006 World Cup was -- and it was, from start to finish, with tiny underdog nations and haughty Old World powers both pulling upsets and the scandal-plagued Italians forgetting the troubles back home and winning their first title since '82 -- a penalty-kick shootout is just no way to end such a thing.
Even the NHL, which rarely gets anything right, gets this right. The hockey league introduced a penalty-shot shootout to decide tie games in the regular season, but in the playoffs, teams have to keep playing in overtime until somebody scores. Theoretically, it could go on forever.
And wouldn't that have been something, France and Italy playing on into infinity, France down a man after captain Zinedine Zidane, an all-time great player, ended his international career in disgrace by head-butting Italian rival Marco Materazzi in the chest during the second 15-minute extra period, drawing a red card in what he'd said would be his final game.
The shootout was certainly exciting, in that tense, heart-pounding way that any such contest can be. Will Fast Eddie make that shot in the corner pocket and beat the fat man? The shaking hands, the sweat.
But come on. The world's biggest sporting event decided by a skills contest? The comparison to a hockey shootout isn't the most apt. It's really more like a free-throw shooting contest, with the likelihood of a miss even more slim.
Yes, there was a certain tension involved in wondering whether Fabio Grosso would boot home the game-winner with Italy's fifth penalty kick or whether this kick would be the exceedingly rare one that didn't go in. And there was certainly excitement when he did knock it in, setting off a wild, kind of weirdly choreographed-at-times celebration among the Italians.
But there would have been much more tension -- building and building -- as a scoreless overtime went on and on. Yeah, there might have been some boring soccer, if you consider a few hours of sweaty palms and tight throats boring, but if you think the Italians were happy and relieved after that penalty-kick win, imagine them after a genuine goal, achieved by playing, you know, actual soccer for a few hours.