France raise the pain barrier

For France, this 18th FIFA World Cup finals tournament will end as it started - with a game against an Alpine neighbour.

Heartening statistics
Few who saw Raymond Domenech's side draw 0-0 against Switzerland in Stuttgart on 13 June could have envisaged them reaching the final, where they take on Italy. And while many remain to be convinced that they can stop Italy becoming champions for a fourth time, France can take heart from recent statistics.

Club disparity
Historically France are in Italy's shadow. The Azzurri have won 17 of the 32 matches between the nations and in club terms were handed a massive head start. The top Italian sides were competitive professional outfits long before France abandoned amateurism in 1932.

Long gap
That disparity in club strength might go some way to explaining why France went 61 years and 19 meetings without beating Italy following a 2-1 victory at the Antwerp Olympics in August 1920. That long gap included a 3-1 defeat in the 1938 World Cup quarter-finals and a 2-1 loss in the 1978 World Cup group stage, the latter despite taking the lead through Bernard Lacombe after just 36 seconds.

Platini strikes
Even the great 1958 team of Raymond Kopa and Roger Piantoni, the son of Italian parents, failed to make a mark against Italy. However, another Frenchman of Italian extraction was to help end that run with Michel Platini opening the scoring as Les Bleus earned a 2-0 friendly win in February 1982.

Italian lessons
Platini's trick, which future generations would replicate, was to learn how to play football the Italian way by moving to Serie A. "Football and winning are a kind of religion in Italy," he explained. "I learned things at Juventus that I could not have done in France."

Changing tide
Such lessons had certainly been learned by 1986 when France knocked Italy out of the Mexico finals with a 2-0 second-round triumph, and another crucial result came as they overcame the Azzurri 1-0 in Naples in 1994, not long after Olympique de Marseille had scalped AC Milan in the first UEFA Champions League final.

World champions
That 1994 French ensemble was full of players toughened up by Serie A, as was the 1998 World Cup-winning squad that got past Italy on penalties in the quarter-finals. The likes of Zinédine Zidane, Marcel Desailly, Lilian Thuram, Youri Djorkaeff, Didier Deschamps, Vincent Candela, Alain Boghossian and Laurent Blanc all picked up important values in Italy. Desailly said: "Most of us would not have reached that level without playing in the greatest leagues in Europe and, in particular, Italy."

Painful defeat
Italy have now not beaten France since 1982, with their UEFA EURO 2000™ final reverse in Rotterdam proving especially painful. The Azzurri were anticipating victory through Marco Delvecchio's 55th-minute strike when Sylvain Wiltord equalised deep in added time. David Trezeguet, who left AS Monaco FC for Juventus after the tournament, scored the golden goal winner on 103 minutes. A cruel joke has circulated in France ever since: "If you want to know how to recork a champagne bottle, ask an Italian."