Well, the 2006 version has come and gone, and Italy are now 4 time winners. In light of the cheese' horrible prediction rate with the semi's he decided not to post predictions for the 3rd place and final games. But, of course, what he believed would happen in those did come to pass, but with a few surprises.
The 3-1 Germany victory was pretty much expected, and nice to see after Cristiano Ronaldo's crap performance in the quarterfinals against England.
To say the final was interesting might qualify as the understatement of the year.
France was a big underdog going in, even though they had been so in nearly every match. In eight games the only team to score on Italy was Italy (an own goal against U.S.), and France hadn't exactly been lighting up the score boards. But a 1-1 tie after regulation and overtime was not expected.
More than that, though, no one could have predicted French Captain Zinedine Zidane head butt an Italian defender just 10 minutes before the end of his last international match. Zizou has been mum on what words were exchanged, though the rumor is that Materazzi made some sort of racial/religious slur (Zidane is of Algerian descent, and the cheese' believes he is also a Muslim, though this could have been pulled out of the cheese' ass). Even still, Zidane still won the Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament's overall best player (sidenote: Germany's Klose won the Golden Boot with 5 goals, 10 overall in his two world cups). A bit of a sad way for Zidane to go out, but the spectacle was awesome to watch.
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