A hearty rendition of O Sole Mio was booming out in Italy’s dressing room when Prime Minister Romano Prodi came to congratulate the team on beating Germany. ”Even he joined in,” Fabio Cannavaro said. ”It was great.”
For Cannavaro, hearing that Neapolitan ditty being sung joyously was particularly special. A son of Naples, he remembers a World Cup semifinal there that left nobody in the mood to sing.
Cannavaro was a ball boy at his hometown stadium in 1990 when Italy’s dream was crushed by Argentina in a penalty shoot-out. Two late goals in Dortmund averted the prospect of similar despair and he was entitled to sing loudly. He had been outstanding and it was hard to argue with Marcello Lippi’s description of him as the world’s best centre-back.
Sunday, fittingly, will bring the captain’s 100th cap and it suggests a lack of ego that he had to be told such a twist was possible.
”We were joking about how many caps he needed to overtake this player and that player,” Lippi said, ”and I told him: ‘Do you know, with this World Cup if you get to the final, seven games will take you to 100?’ And now we are there it is a fantastic thing.
”Cannavaro is having a fantastic World Cup. He is without question the strongest defender at this tournament and the absolute number one in the world.”
Italy want to leave as number one. Though dressing-room celebrations were raucous on Tuesday, it was a calm squad that digested the success over dinner and small amounts of alcohol. There is determination not to waste this chance.
For Cannavaro it would help wipe out such lows as 1990 and defeat in the Euro 2000 final, when a rare error of his helped France score. ”We are very happy to be where we are,” he said, ”but I don’t want to stop now.”
Cannavaro will not allow complacency. The Juventus defender is more quiet captain than tub-thumping orator, but he leads by example and cajoles or guides. During the semifinal, for example, he gestured to Marco Materazzi to play calmly after his fellow central defender had again wasted possession. Aggressive Cannavaro may be, but he is always relaxed enough to see the full picture.
The 32-year-old is described in the Italian football federation guide as ”the footballing Neapolitan street urchin” and there is that rugged quality about his play. It sums up what he brings that a former national coach, Cesare Maldini, called him Canna, meaning cane or reed — something that bends but does not break.
Cannavaro, like the goalkeeper Gigi Buffon, has been unbreakable as Italy have progressed while conceding only once, and that an own-goal. A relative lack of height does not prevent him being strong in the air, his positioning is excellent and his tackling well timed. His displays and organising are all the more impressive for coming, since early in the third group game, without his usual partner Alessandro Nesta, who is injured.
When Cannavaro reflected on this team’s accomplishments, he alluded to failure in Euro 2004 and the 2002 World Cup. ”We stored up a lot of anger,” he said, ”about how we hadn’t performed or qualified for the later stages, and we have taken that anger out on the pitch here.”
Lippi underlined his astuteness by making crucial changes against Germany. Alessandro del Piero was brought on late and scored the clinching second goal. The striker noted that, amid the scandal engulfing Italy’s domestic football, ”we have shown that we have got some great footballers at Juventus and that we are not criminals”. — Â