NOT SURPRISINGLY, Italian coach Roberto Donadoni and his opposite number, Raymond Domenech, had totally different views of Italy's 2-0 win in Zurich last night. Whilst the Italian refused to acknowledge that Italy had got all the breaks going, his French rival was bitterly critical of the refereeing.
Clearly, the turning point of the game was the 25th minute penalty awarded to Italy after defender Eric Abidal was adjudged to have brought down Italian centre forward, Luca Toni. Not only did the referee award the spot kick but he dealt a double blow to France by also sending off Abidal. It was a decision that obviously did not meet with Domenech's approval.
"The referee was not up to the task. You could argue about his decision but to then show the red card to our defender, that was basically handing the game to Italy with a 1-0 scoreline and us down to 10 men."
Inevitably, such concerns escaped Donadoni. When asked if it was not true that luck had been very much on Italy's side, not only because of the penalty decision but also because France were deprived of arguably their best player of the moment, Frank Ribery, injured in the eighth minute and also because Italy's second goal came from a deflection, Donadoni replied.
"Yeah, we were certainly lucky with the second goal but I would say that we started really well. We missed a great chance right at the beginning and we did not reap as much as we deserved initially.
"But we did well tonight, France ran, fought and made us work all the way, complimenti to them.
"It's true that we did not make as much as we should have of our extra man."
Asked what he thought of the fact that the Netherlands, after all the pre-match speculation that they might deliberately lose to Romania, had in fact beaten the East Europeans 2-0, Donadoni was emphatic. Given that he is a former AC Milan team-mate of Dutch coach Marco Van Basten, there were those willing to speculate that he would ring his old friend before the game and ask him for a favour.
"I'm not surprised by Holland's result. I told you yesterday that it seemed an insulting idea to me that I would ring Marco Van Basten and tell him to make sure he did a good job against Romania. I'm a coach and if somebody tried to suggest something like that to me, I would be tempted to give him a clip on the ear."
As far as Donadoni was concerned, this had been a great night for Italy.
"We pulled off a great result today but it wasn't all positive and there were things out there that did not please me. We need to improve. I would not call this my best ever victory as Italian coach but it was a very important one not just for me but for a group of players who have worked hard to get here."
French coach Domenech was asked if Italy could now be considered one of the favourites to lift the trophy.
"At this point, every team that is in the quarter-finals is a favourite. I don't even know who they play in the next round . . . Oh, it will be Spain, tres beau, that will be a good game."
Italy do in fact meet Spain in the quarter-finals. Asked how he viewed that game, Donadoni kicked to touch.
"Spain are a good team, a difficult team, we met them in friendly in March and lost 1-0 to them so we know how good they are. At this point in the tournament, we don't expect any soft touches."
