While the unrestrained delight of Italy's World Cup winning players dominates many front pages, including those of the FT and Herald Tribune, it's the sending off of the iconic French captain, Zinedine Zidane, for headbutting Marco Materazzi that attracts most attention.
IT'S ZID VICIOUS is how the Sun headlines "the astonishing head butt disgrace" of the 34-year-old deep into extra time in his final match before retirement. LE NUTTER says the Times, with frame-by-frame photos showing how Zidane lunged his bald head into the chest of the Italian defender in retaliation for apparent nipple-twisting and constant carping.
"For someone who has served football so magnificently, who has always been such a creature of sublime grace on and off the pitch, the way in which Zidane's career ended defied disbelief," writes Henry Wintour in the Telegraph. "Lowering his head like a bull, recreating a scene straight from the streets of Pamplona, Zidane charged into Materazzi's chest. Mayhem ensued."
The Guardian's Kevin McCarra highlights the Italians' "flawless set of penalties" which secured them their fourth World Cup. "They had never been undisputed masters in any other aspects of the final, yet the honour is theirs." The fact that the only French player to miss his penalty, David Trezeguet, plays for the Italian club Juventus - which is at the centre of the match fixing allegations that had overshadowed Italy's campaign - is not lost on the papers.
An article in the Independent, accompanied by a photo of young Italians splashing around Rome's Trevi fountain, believes the victory was a gift for the new prime minister, Romano Prodi, who "is sure to bask in the reflected glory with his fragile government". Meanwhile, those grateful that the month-long competition that has dominated newspapers and television schedules is finally at an end should make hay while the sun shines; the Times notes that there are "only 1,414 days to go" until the 2010 tournament begins in South Africa.
* Italy win the World Cup
* Sun: Zid vicious
* Telegraph: Insane dismissal spoils a great party
* Times: Le Nutter
SHIA GUNMEN SHOOT DEAD 40 SUNNIS
Fears of civil war erupting in Iraq have been revived by the killing yesterday of at least 40 people in Baghdad, all apparently Sunni, in what the Guardian describes as "one of the capital's most deadly sectarian pogroms".
At least another 17 people were killed later by two car bombs in a Shia part of the city, in what appeared to be a retaliatory attack. The Times reports how at around 6.30am Shia gangs dressed in civilian clothes set up checkpoints in Jihad to scan people's identity papers for Sunni-sounding names, pulled men from their cars and shot them.
"Squads of gunmen, some wearing masks and black uniforms, then stormed into Sunni homes and shot men in alleys, witnesses said." Sunnis have blamed the Mahdi army, the Shia militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, for the killings.
* Massacre revives civil war fears
* Times: Shia gunmen on the rampage
ID CARDS 'DOOMED'
The government's ID card scheme is a "botched rush job that is doomed to fail", the Mirror says. "Leaked emails between two senior officials reveal ministers are 'rethinking' the entire plan due to serious hitches that may end with it being 'canned completely'. One blames the prime minister personally claiming his insistence on pushing the scheme through quickly could prove a costly mess," the paper says.
The emails first emerged in yesterday's Sunday Times, the Guardian explains. In one, David Foord, the director in charge of identity and defence at the Office of Government Finance, which audits the project for the Treasury, warned: "We are setting ourselves up to fail. Even if everything went perfectly (which it will not) it is very debatable whether whatever TNIR [temporary scheme] turns out to be... can be procured, delivered, tested and rolled out in two years."
Simon Davies, of the London School of Economics, tells the paper that the emails indicate a "meltdown in the planning and execution of the project". The scheme should be taken out of the hands of the Home Office, which is "incapable" of running it, LSE researchers believe.
Meanwhile, the former head of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, tells the Times that there will be a "haemorrhaging of talent" from the Home Office as morale collapses in the maligned department. "There are some fine people in the Home Office," Mr Narey, who left last year to run the children's charity Barnado's, says. "Never a week goes by without them ringing me to ask how I got out." Mr Narey particularly takes issue with the home secretary, John Reid, who declared the department "not fit for purpose" less than a fortnight after taking over the role. "For them [Home Office workers] to be traduced to a soundbite was scandalous," he says. "You cannot go into an organisation and trash it."
* Email leak fuels clamour to scrap ID cards scheme
* Times: Staff are 'fleeing the Home Office'
EMBRACE A HOODIE, SAYS CAMERON
The Telegraph highlights divisions between traditionalists and modernisers within the Conservative party. The paper reports a Conservative backlash against a speech the party leader, David Cameron, is expected to deliver later today in which he calls for people to show more "love" to gangs of teenage hoodies.
Opponents tell the paper that Mr Cameron "risks losing touch with ordinary voters". "Most people will be horrified by this. These young hoodlums are a real nuisance and perhaps if their parents had shown them some love that might have helped," a senior Tory MP tells the paper. Telegraph comment writer, Janet Daley, says: "Delinquents and immigrants are two groups that probably thought they knew pretty much where they stood with the Conservative party, but all bets are off. David Cameron will tell us today that the war on juvenile thugs is over... [the move] is almost entirely misjudged".
Meanwhile, the Mail says that Mr Cameron is having his own spot of bother with leaked emails which reveal "turmoil and backbiting in his party". Missives from his parliamentary private secretary, Desmond Swayne, were less than endorsing of Francis Maude, the party chairman, who "is not yet trusted" and Theresa May, the shadow Commons leader, "who is neither liked nor trusted". Another, unnamed, shadow minister was described as "mincehead", the Telegraph adds.
* Telegraph: Janet Daley
* Mail: Now Cameron says: We must love hoodies
GULF VETERAN SAYS HE KILLED FOUR RELATIVES
A Gulf war veteran calmly walked into a police station yesterday declaring he had just killed four people. The papers say the 40-year-old killed his uncle and aunt, both in their seventies, and their two grown-up sons. The Mirror says two were probably killed with a pistol fitted with a silencer as they watched TV in the living room. The others apparently died in the kitchen.
The Mail, which splashes on the story, says David Bradley, who had a history of mental illness, walked into the police station in the city's west end with a bag containing two firearms and a homemade bomb. Mr Bradley had seen four of his comrades killed by American friendly fire during the first Gulf war, the paper says, and had sought help during the past decade for post traumatic stress disorder from the Gulf War Veterans' Association.
* Ex-soldier held after four relatives shot dead
* Mail: Mentally ill Gulf war veteran quizzed over murders of family
HOW THEY'LL WALK
The Times reports on a new computer technique for identifying criminals by the way they walk. The "gait recognition" technology is likely to have significant implications for police, the paper says. "For more than 10 years, scientists have been working on a computer system that can analyse the movements of criminals caught on CCTV," the paper says. "The system works on the premise that every individual has a signature walking style."
A leader comment believes that the time may be coming for the Ministry of Silly Walks. It laments how some walks have faded with time: "the rolling swell has gone the way of the Indian tea-clipper, the goose-step fell with the Reich, the bow-legged no longer swagger down the streets of Laredo and Quasimodo's heirs have straightened their backs". In their place have come the "pimp-roll" (where sides alternately droop and roll forward with lurking unspoken menace) and mobile drift (an "aimless meander across the street that come to a sudden stop on receipt of astonishing fresh gossip"). "Like the policeman's lurch, each step reveals past crimes and future intentions. Police only have to watch the cameras to spot the gait," the paper says.
* Times: Aiming to catch criminals red-footed
COMING UP ON GUARDIAN UNLIMITED TODAY
>>> Defence secretary Des Browne is expected to announce details of the promised reinforcements for the British task force in southern Afghanistan.
>>> A new public warning system to alert people to the threat of attacks by al Qaida and other terror groups will be announced.
>>> Two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing at least seven people and wounding 17.
