‘A people of saints, poets and defenders’

BRING on the Martians! Maybe it’s not the most catchy football chant for next season, but Il Messaggero captured perfectly the mood of delirium that swept across Italy at around 11.30 on Tuesday night.

“There are some days that never end,” wrote Enrico Maida amid the bedlam, “and July 4 — a date of historic relevance for all humanity — was one such for Italian football”.

All the memories of that other semi-final, in 1970, came flooding back: the extra time “unforgettable, just as it was 36 years ago”; Franz Beckenbauer, now as then seemingly unperturbed; the shots that cannoned against post and crossbar “as if fate had decided to compensate the Germans for all those times we’ve beaten them”.

“Cannavaro is Captain Pizza,” declared Luigi Garlando in the Gazetta dello Sport, conjuring up a strange vision of the Juventus centre-back leaping on board his Vespa to deliver a piping hot Napoletana.

Cannavaro was in fact born in Naples, the spiritual home of the pizza, and played for Napoli for three years — but this was more a response to the suggestion from Das Bild that true Germans should boycott pizza forever more should the Italians once again spoil the party.

“Thanks to the captain and a magnificent Grosso we have become a people of saints, poets and defenders,” the paper continued, providing further evidence that it was not just the crowds in the streets that had let victory go to their heads.

You have to have sympathy for journalists steeling themselves to tell the story of an agonising penalty shoot out but who are then transfixed by two moments of rapture — and still have to file their copy.

Marco Degl’Innocenti managed to grab a few words with Italy’s Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who spent the match seated next to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“It’s beautiful, beautiful,” cried Prodi. “And I’d just told Merkel how much I hate penalties.”

Prodi, ever the gentleman, then accompanied the German leader across the pitch, before joining the players in the dressing room where he was greeted by a chorus of O Sole Mio.

In Milan, 60,000 had gathered in the cathedral square to watch the game on a giant screen.

In Rome, the venue was, fittingly, the Circus Maximus, where they raced chariots 2,000 years ago. The crowd was estimated at 50,000. Further south in Naples, another vast crowd assembled in Piazza del Plebiscito.

It was that sort of night all over Italy, and the wild celebrations reflected not only a thrilling victory but also the relief that Italian football could again hold its head up with pride.

Every paper pointed to the contrast between the glory of Dortmund and the sobering proceedings at the Olympic Stadium, where the prosecution has just demanded exemplary punishment for the clubs and personages involved in the match-fixing conspiracy.

Italy coach Marcello Lippi made the point himself: “I won’t reveal what I said to the lads — that’s something just between us. But what I will say is that they should be proud to have revived such enthusiasm and love in our country. With this we have re-launched Italian football.”

“It is a win that puts everything up in the air,” said La Repubblica. “Many of the team play for clubs that could face relegation, but on the pitch no one thought about that. It has restored the possibility of starting with a clean sheet.”

And to crown a perfect night, the Gazzetta was able to report that the Germans were still munching their Pizza, despite Das Bild’s demands for a boycott.

“Ah, those people on Das Bild are always doing things like that,” Klaus, a Munich taxi driver, told Alessandra Bocci.

“But they learned it from the English. Over there, they still talk about German panzers, stuff from 60 years ago. I ask you — have you seen any tanks driving around?”