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World Cup 2006

After its Far Eastern sojourn, the FIFA World Cup was back on more familiar territory - Germany. After 32 years the tournament was back. England were the only British qualifiers having won through with Poland from a qualifying group which contained both Wales and Northern Ireland. Following the previous two tournaments there were 32 participants, initially split into 8 groups of 4 with the top two in each group to qualify for the knock out stages.

Group Stage

The first group saw hosts Germany qualify easily with a 100% record against Ecuador, Poland and Costa Rica. Ecuador joined them by dint of their wins over the other two teams. Group B was England's group and to be brutal they huffed and puffed to win the group with a close 1-0 against Paraguay and a nervous 2-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago. As usual (it seems) England enjoyed a draw with Sweden (2-2), this time though, England finished as group winners with 7 points to Sweden's 5.

Group C was supposedly the Group of Death, but Argentina and the Netherlands had already qualified when they played their 0-0 draw in their final group match. Serbia and Montenegro were beaten by Ivory Coast in the other game. In Group D, Portugal's 100% record saw them qualify along with Mexico. Angola and Iran the unlucky teams. Group E featured Italy and they qualified with 7 points along with Ghana whose 2-0 victory over the Czech Republic had set them on their way after losing their first match against the Italians. The fourth placed team was the USA with just a single, solitary point albeit gained against Italy.

Group F gave us another surprise, Australia joining Brazil in the Round of 16 after seeing off Croatia and Japan. Group G delivered us two European teams, France and Switzerland - at the expense of Korea and Togo. Finally, in Group H we saw a typical first round performance from Spain with a 100% record. They were joined by Ukraine in the Round of 16 at the expense of Tunisia and Saudi Arabia whose only points came in their 2-2 draw with each other.

Round of 16

The 8 games in the Round of 16 went pretty much to form. In fact apart from perhaps France v Spain and Portugal v Netherlands the obviously stronger teams all won. So we had Germany defeating Sweden; Argentina eventually seeing off a spirited Mexico team; Italy beat Australia; Ukraine had to rely on a penalty shootout to beat Switzerland; England stumbled past Ecuador and Brazil comfortable defeated Ghana. Portugal against the Netherlands was a close game, as expected and it was the Portuguese that emerged triumphant as Maniche scored the only goal on 23 minutes. In the other close game France proved to be too strong for their southern neighbours as Spain were defeated 3-1 with late goals from Patrick Vieira (83 minutes) and Zinedine Zidane in added time (90 + 2).

Quarter Finals

England were to have a man sent off and to suffer yet again from the penalty spot again in their quarter final with Portugal. In a close contest that England had arguably shaded up to the point of Rooney's sending off, England regrouped and may have won the game in normal time, despite their being a man down. As I trudged down to the Coop to buy some more beer after the game, I reflected that a little more adventure may well have seen England progress to the semi-finals. As it was, after a goalless 120 minutes, penalties were missed by Frank Lampard, then Hugo Viana before Petit and Gerrard also missed, making the score 1-1 after three each. Portugal then scored through Helder Postiga before Jamie Carragher's miss left it up to Ronaldo to make it England 1-3 Portugal.

Germany and Argentina also went to penalties as their game finished 1-1 after 120 minutes. The Germans needed only four of their five to win 4-2 as Argentina missed 2 of theirs. Italy had a comfortable 3-0 win over Ukraine - they were probably out of puff after their drawn out victory over the Swiss in the last round in Cologne. And finally, France completed the all-European semi-final line up as Thierry Henry scored the only goal of the game to beat Brazil in Frankfurt.

Semi Finals

In the first semi-final Germany met Italy in Dortmund. The game, although goalless in 90 minutes was absorbing. It was looking very much like penalties would again be needed to decide the outcome of the game when with just 2 minutes of extra-time remaining first Fabio Grosso and then Alessandro del Piero popped up to score thus seeing the hosts heartbroken.

In the other semi-final in Munich there was rare English and French agreement - on the fact that they didn't much like Cristiano Ronaldo. Consequently, he got the bird throughout the tie. As it happened the game itself was close, settled by French captain Zinedine Zidane with a first half penalty kick.

Final

So the whole jamboree came down to one game, to be played in the Olimpiastadion, Berlin. In keeping with many of the games in the knock out stages, the Final was eventually decided by kicks from the penalty spot. However the game itself will always be remembered for Zidane's headbutt on Materazzi. In a more positive light, because neither emerges with much credit from that incident, it was they who had scored the two goals - Zidane giving the French the lead with a 7th minute penalty and Materazzi equalising on 20 minutes.

The game was tight, but both had opportunities to have won, indeed the Italians did have the ball in the net in the second half but the goal was disallowed for offside. So after 120 minutes, which resulted in a 1-1 draw, it was David Trezeguet's miss which ultimately resulted in a win 5-3 on penalties for Italy and their fourth World Cup.