First of all, one must be grateful that Italy won the World Cup Sunday, because it would have been very annoying to endure four years of even more French arrogance. And it’s particularly delightful because, as the game wore on, the French outplayed the Italians. Life is unfair. Live with it. It’s a lot more fun to have Italian world champs. On balance, the French got the breaks from the refs and from the crossbar. The first penalty, duly converted by Zinedine Zidane, probably shouldn’t have been called, but that was balanced by one that should have been called in the second half. Italy had a gorgeous goal cancelled by a very questionable offside call. The French hit the crossbar twice: Zidane’s penalty bounced inside the line, David Trezeguet’s didn’t), so that’s a wash. In the end, Italy’s great keeper, Gianluigi Buffon (one of the few players on the field whose name did not end with a vowel) kept his team in the game, and France eventually lost when one of their players hit the crossbar on a penalty kick. It wasn’t a great game; Like most championship showdowns, it was a tough game, and there was ample toughness on both sides. “Defense wins championships,” and Italy clearly had the best defense in the tournament (no one scored a normal goal; the two recorded goals were an autogol against the U.S. and a penalty against France). The French can legitimately argue that they played better — although not dramatically better — but the Italians certainly played well enough to win. And notice, please, that the United States was the only team that did not lose when they played Italy. One always looks for a deeper meaning in great sporting events, but aside from long-lasting curses and hexes — some of which, like the Curse of the Bambino, eventually come to an end — there isn’t any. The final brought an unceremonious end to two hexes: France had long dominated Italy, and the Italians invariably lost important games decided by penalty kicks. To save the best for last: The French coach was an astrology freak who banned Scorpios from the team and generally kept Leos on the bench. That was an additional motive to warm the hearts of all Leos, a proud bunch. Hear us roar, you idiot. The cameo moment was Zidane’s disgusting and utterly stupid head butt, which produced his expulsion, and rightly so. Those of us who followed his career at Juventus and Real Madrid were not surprised; every so often he “lost it,” for “reasons” that never really explained anything. The Guardian claims that he was enraged when Marco Materazzi called him an Algerian “terrorist,” but Zidane’s action seems more calculated to confirm the insult than to demonstrate his good character. It’s an heroic flaw. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matt_foot/2006/07/zidane_an_injustice_waiting_to.html For me, the outcome was trebly delightful. It’s always wonderful when Italy wins and France loses. And the outcome should silence the small army of sanctimonious critics of Italian soccer. As you may know, one of the latest Italian scandals has uncovered shady dealings between the owners and managers of the country’s leading teams and the referees. Imagine! If confirmed, some of these teams, including those who regularly win the national championship, like Juventus and Milan, will sent down to the minor leagues, and some of the executives will serve time or pay big fines, and I’m all for that. There have to be penalties for malefactors. But it is quite a leap of illogic to go from that to argue that those teams didn’t deserve to win their championships. Top Italian teams have won at every level, and it’s hard to imagine that they corrupted all the refs. They certainly didn’t buy this World Cup (in fact, some of the players openly said that they were driven to play so well precisely because of some of the accusations). And coach Marcello Lippi managed his players magnificently.

No, Italy won because they were the best team in the tournament. Over the long grind they played better than anyone else. They showed pride and discipline, they performed magnificently under stress, they clearly enjoyed themselves, and their on-field celebration was really cool, don’t you think?

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.