The Hindu : Sport : Rome comes alive in the heat of the night

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 12, 2006

Sport

Sport

Rome comes alive in the heat of the night

ROME: Italy's jubilant World Cup winners arrived back home with the coveted trophy on Monday amid a welter of excitement in Rome as fans prepared an emotional reception on the streets of the capital.

The team's plane touched down at a military airbase outside Rome shortly before an official parade through the capital's historic centre, which was to culminate in a giant party at the ancient Circus Maximus.

But the team bus had first to negotiate some 30 km of roads lined with ecstatic fans as it made its way into the city to keep an appointment with Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who was waiting to host an official reception for Italy's football heroes.

Traffic ground to a halt as motorists stopped to catch a glimpse of the players and bellow their joy. The bus was followed by dozens of scooters and motorcycles trailing Italian flags.

Italy's heroes are to be decorated with one of the state's highest honours by President Giorgio Napolitano in recognition of their victory.

The players, coach Marcello Lippi, technical staff and directors of the Italian football association are to be awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic.

Huge cheer

Shortly after the plane carrying the team landed at Practica di Mare airbase, skipper Fabio Cannavaro held the trophy aloft on the gangway, raising huge cheers from a few hundred fans at the base.

Italy's air force aerobatic team, trailing smoke, painted the sky in the green, white and red colours of the national flag during repeated fly-pasts.

The team and officials were immediately whisked off to waiting buses, but the cavalcade's progress became painfully slow as it neared the city centre.

After the 30-minute reception, the team was expected to parade the World Cup through the capital's historic centre aboard an open-topped bus, ending up at the ancient Circus Maximus, where a giant party was planned.

With banner headlines like "Champions" and "The World Belongs to Us," the triumphant Italian press hailed the players as legends, saying the team's victory over France in Sunday's final had deservedly delivered the nation and themselves proper acclaim.

"We are champions because we are Italian," Corriere della Sera, Italy's biggest-selling newspaper, said in an editorial. From now on "everywhere on Planet Earth, the white red and green passport of Italy will be stamped with admiration."

Feel-good factor

The challenge for Prodi now is to tap into that feel-good factor after a desperately grim period for the economy, one of the worst-performing in the European Union, and for domestic football, rocked by a match-fixing scandal.

Prodi and economy minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa announced a whopping 35 billion euros in budget cuts at the weekend in a bid to bring the public deficit below the 3.0 percent of GDP required under Eurozone rules by 2007.

Pierluigi Bersani, minister for economic development, said the World Cup win would add a sweetener to the cuts, which the centre-left government admitted will be difficult for Italians to swallow.

"There's a feeling that if we can do it in football, we can certainly also do it in the economy," he told reporters.

"There's a clear, measurable boost to business confidence, and probably to consumer spending as well, in the wake of something like this. We saw that when France won the World Cup eight years ago," said Howard Archer, chief European economist for analysts Global Insight.

"The question is how long it can be sustained?" he said. "And you have to ask, how much is it a question of bringing forward spending that would have taken place anyway further down the line?"

"The best case scenario is that there will be a short-term boost to public spending, enabling unemployment to dip because companies will take on more workers to cope with the extra demand. But in the long term I suspect it will be pretty modest," said Archer.

Call for leniency

The World Cup triumph fuelled demands for the four clubs caught up in a match-fixing scandal to be treated leniently. The verdict of a sports tribunal investigating the murky affair had been expected the day after the victorious Azzurri returned home.

But, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) now says there is "no certainty" about the timing of the verdicts that could lead to the relegation of Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio.

Local media speculated that the tribunal's rulings could come as late as Friday or Saturday, allowing Italians more time to revel in Sunday's penalty shootout win over France.

Justice minister Clemente Mastella called for a judgment that "takes into account the triumph."

"Let's do what they did in ancient Rome: whoever has given us prestige and dignity should be treated differently, as one who has done something exemplary," Mastella said.

For the sake of fans

AC Milan owner and former PM Silvio Berlusconi argued that relegation would hurt fans the most. "We can't penalise the fans. The individuals should be punished, not the clubs," he said.

Defending champion Juventus risks relegation to the third division if found guilty of trying to influence the appointment of match officials for games during the 2004-05 season.

"As a fan, I fear we risk the third division and I invoke the clemency of the tribunal," said Piero Fassino, head of the Democrats of the Left, one of the ruling coalition parties.

AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio face possible relegation to the second tier Serie B while 26 individuals — including club and FIGC officials, referees and linesmen — risk bans.

Italy's World Cup victory in 1982 was followed by an amnesty for those banned after a betting scandal two years earlier. Despite the outburst of national pride over the latest win, the chances of an amnesty appear less certain this time.

FIGC commissioner Guido Rossi has consistently ruled out the possibility of an amnesty and many fans believe Italy's triumph will not soften the sentences handed down by the tribunal. — Agencies

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