France stage coup de monde

La Metamorphose! One glance at St Denis tells you how hard pressed it is. Grey boxes strewn on a concrete wilderness as the train shuttles by from wonderful Paris to the cool halls of the airport. Last night it was the centre of the world. The surreal, beautiful stadium which has been set down here, shook, quaked and rocked.

Tricolours rippled the sky. Songs rattled the roof. Men cried. Women danced. Fireworks crackled. People got kissed who've never been kissed before. France became Champions of the World.

"This group of players was born for the World Cup," said Youri Djorkaeff, the French midfielder of Armenian stock. That was just the point, though. They weren't born for it. They grafted. Brazilians are born for it.

It must have been like this when the men in the bible stepped from the boat on to the surface of the water, when the first plane stayed up in the air for breathless seconds, when Armstrong got moondust on his earthly feet. Achievement which defied comprehension.

In St Denis they danced on air, walked on water, went over the moon. France won the World Cup and men in blue shirts mounted the steps and lifted the gold.

What a sensational night. The outsiders with nothing to offer except their nation's hospitality and their extraordinary defence beat the Brazilians, brand leaders in the romance business. Beat them well, with three goals, two of them functionally crafted, one of them the crowning moment, a thing of beauty.

And they didn't even have a striker. They didn't have Laurent Blanc. And in the end they didn't have Marcel Desailly: but they had the World Cup trophy hoisted into the Parisian sky.

Seldom has sport presented such a dramatic consummation of hope and achievement. This was an evening when France was subconsciously prepared to celebrate gallant defeat, to wonder at the journey their largely workaday team had taken. Instead men grew into giants before their eyes. Their goals came from midfielders. Two from Zidane and the final one deep in injury time from the superlative Petit.

It was an extraordinary night.

Zinedine Zidane, a child of hard streets in Marseille, knew the feeling of having his name chanted in every corner of the republic. Zizou! Zizou! Zizou! The little man with the bald patch and the snake's smile was everywhere. Every blade, every screen, every mouth, every keyboard. Zizou! Zizou! Zizou!

Two matching goals both from near post headers in the first half elevated Zidane to the pantheon. The son of a poverty-strained family of Algerian immigrants, Zizou was the story of the evening, the story of the World Cup, the story of France. Work, integration, achievement. Zidane missed two games earlier in this World Cup having copped a suspension for a silly foul. Last night he added atonement to the list of his credits.

He was overshadowed in midfield, perhaps, by Emmanuel Petit, the pony-tailed Arsenal midfielder who filled in at centre half when Desailly was sent off and still found time to charge up field and score the goal which finished the tournament and lay the Brazilians in the ground.

Brazil were never what we had expected them to be. For a few mad minutes before the kick-off, indeed, they were something else entirely, sending out a team sheet without the name of Ronaldo on it. Another appeared minutes later and Edmundo's name had been erased and Ronaldo's name included.

Stories ran like bushfire around the stands of the Brazilians having taken Ronaldo to hospital within an hour of the start of the game, of dissent and turmoil beyond the dressingroom door. On the pitch the reality looked depressingly prosaic. Ronaldo unfit. Dunga tired. Bebeto uninspired.

"Everybody was very upset and very down about Ronaldo," said Brazil's coach Mario Zagallo afterwards at a bad-tempered press conference which left more questions unanswered, "and the team played to less than their full potential. It was indicative of the major problem with Ronaldo. We were very inhibited."

What happened to Ronaldo is a little yarn for today or tomorrow. Last night the Brazilian defence was the tale. More anemic than their history entitled them to be, they seemed shaken by the vigour of the French support and the ambition of the French attacks and the defiant panache of the French defending.

Brazil's defence had been rickety throughout this tournament and last night it fell to dust. Junior Baiano was awful. Aldair slightly less awful. The French knew they were on to something early on when they drummed out three scoring chances in the first 10 minutes.

They pushed and pushed and felt the door scraping open. Djorkaeff missed two. Guivarc'h began a chain of misses which on less charitable occasions would have had him guillotined. Instead he's moving to Newcastle.

A couple of goals up at halftime, with a million tricolours fluttering in front of their eyes and the words Allez, Allez, Allez buzzing their ears. They hadn't dared to have dreams of this.

The second half was a metaphor for the tournament France have had. Defiance and defence. Resistance!

The Brazilians, treated to an interval with the smelling salts, had come to. The French defended with passion. Adversity mounted before them. Brazilian near misses drew the breath from French lungs. For the second successive game France had a centre half dismissed. The perfection of Marcel Desailly's tournament performances was marred by a slightly harsh sending off for a second bookable defence.

It was the sort of setback the French have learned to deal with, though. Petit dropped back. His clubmate Viera arrived in with regal coolness. The ship steadied.

There will be those curmudgeons who will say that the best team in the tournament didn't win. Perhaps, but it was splendid nonetheless.

France defended with such passion and cunning, went forward with such naive enthusiasm, and sung the song of football like it is meant to be sung. Last night the French won the best World Cup final in years.

Great occasions can do nothing for the terminally mean spirited and this was a great occasion, a great story, beautifully climaxed.