In the end, then, Euro 2000 has got the blues - or Les Bleus and the Azzurri, as the finalists are apt to be known in their respective lands. In Rotterdam tomorrow France and Italy will attempt to spare a largely upbeat European Championship an anticlimax following two dull thuds in the semi-finals. That is to say, the French will hope to win in something like the style to which the present tournament has become happily accustomed. The Italians will simply hope to win.
Italy emerged heroically from the second semi-final on Thursday when they defeated Holland on penalties after keeping the game goalless for two hours, despite losing Gianluca Zambrotta just past the half-hour to a second yellow card. What followed was an epic of defensive excellence, with Alessandro Nesta proving Patrick Kluivert's nemesis and Fabio Cannavaro almost as impassable while Francesco Toldo was unbeaten by two penalties in open play and saved two more in the shoot-out.
One exemplary Italian piece of resistance is enough. Euro 2000 hardly needs another and not only the French will look to Zinedine Zidane to prevent tomorrow's final turning into the bore of attrition which the match in Amsterdam became once Dutch legs tired and the disappointing Dennis Bergkamp gave way to a sluggish Clarence Seedorf.
Most neutrals would have preferred a final between France and Holland, a meeting of contrasting attacking minds, to the conflict of sword and shield now on offer. But knockout competitions seldom get what they want and too many "perfect" finals have flopped before now for anybody to be too put out by the Dutch absence.
The important thing is that the contest is settled without the need for a further shoot-out or even the spurious climax of a "golden goal" in sudden-death extra-time. The one that enabled France to beat Portugal in the other semi-final was not the result of inspired alchemy, more the alertness of the Slovak linesman who spotted Abel Xavier doing a spot of slip fielding at the near post which led to Zidane's decisive penalty.
The hysterical Portuguese protests surrounding this goal cast a long, late shadow across a European Championship which has otherwise brought out the best in the continent's mix of clearly defined styles of play. This time technique has largely triumphed over athleticism, although the extent to which France have augmented their skills with power and pace has so far been the dominating factor.
It has paid teams to be positive. A more liberal interpretation of the offside law, a total ban on challenges from behind and even the restriction on passing back to goalkeepers, which has always appeared to be a cop-out by Fifa, have encouraged sides to take risks and attack from the start instead of hanging around for half an hour to size each other up. Even Italy began by pressurising defences at the earliest opportunity. It is only now that they have reminded Euro 2000 that matches can be won without being won, by sitting tight and leaving the rest to Toldo. Yet before Thursday's triumph in the shoot-out Italian teams had had about as much success in these duels as Ben Turpin, the cross-eyed cowboy.
It is an odd denouement which sees the coaches of the losing semi-finalists, Frank Rijkaard of Holland and Portugal's Humberto Coelho, decide to step down while Kevin Keegan declares, following England's floperoo, that he will change neither his squad nor his tactics - except to tighten the string on his crossbow.
Returning home from international tournaments of this quality it is tempting to hope that some of the lessons will be absorbed by the domestic game. In Euro 2000, for example, Pierluigi Collina and the majority of his fellow referees have shown how to keep discipline and the play flowing at the same time.
Routine fouls have been punished by free-kicks without referees feeling obliged to fish for yellow cards. Writhing players who are obviously not seriously injured have been ignored, like toddlers rolling around the floor of a supermarket. Dissent, with the notable exception of the Portuguese, has been below average. Players have accepted decisions against them and got on with the business of playing.
It would be nice to think that, when the new season starts, the Premiership will have taken some note of what has been going on in Holland and Belgium; nice but not realistic. When two-thirds to three-quarters of clubs are concerned merely with avoiding relegation, the quality of the football served up in a summer tournament is unlikely to be regarded as relevant to the acquisition of a point at Sunderland in January.
Tomorrow's final, therefore, will be an end in itself and nobody's new beginning. At least the Premiership will be represented by foreign proxy in that Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit and Thierry Henry of Arsenal, along with Chelsea's Marcel Desailly, will seek to help France become European champions two years after winning the World Cup.
For the French, compared with the 1998 final in Paris, this will be a role reversal. In the Stade de France Aimé Jacquet's pragmatists approached the game against Brazil expecting to have to mount a defensive operation to contain Ronaldo. Only when it became clear that Ronaldo was not himself did the French seize the initiative, with Zidane putting away two free headers.
Now it is assumed that France, with more strikers at the disposal of Roger Lemerre than were available to Jacquet, will be the main aggressors while Italy will fall back to the Nesta-Cannavaro line and defy them to find a way through. Perhaps it should be "him" rather than "them". Everyone knows the identity of the one man who can save this final from the Etruscan trough of nil-nihilism.
While Zidane is unlikely to get the sort of chances in the air which he accepted with such elan two years ago, in every other respect he is capable of bestriding tomorrow's game, no, not like a colossus, more like Gulliver in Lilliput. For, while the likes of Luigi di Biagio and Gianluca Pessotto may well attempt to tie him down, Zidane is the sort of footballer who can reduce the thickest rope to cotton thread.
Not that Italy will attempt to shackle Zidane by man-marking. He has been around in Serie A long enough for the opposition to know how futile that can be. Dino Zoff is more likely to try to isolate Zidane while denying space to the strikers and tracking down the forward runs of Vieira, Petit, Lilian Thuram and Laurent Blanc.
Youri Djorkaeff, if and when he appears, could be the card up Lemerre's sleeve. Francesco Totti may turn out to be Zoff's ace. Or it might be Alessandro del Piero. Totti's cheeky check and chip in the shoot-out against Holland recalled Antonin Panenka's decisive penalty to win the 1976 final for Czechoslovakia after their enthralling 2-2 draw with West Germany.
Certainly the Feyenoord Stadium would settle for similar excitement tomorrow. Zinedine Zidane can not only win the game for France; he can also prevent it becoming a zzzzzz.
