The indissoluble links between football and Italian public life were dramatically underlined yesterday when national team coach Dino Zoff resigned his job, 24 hours after being heavily criticised by centre-right opposition leader and AC Milan football club owner Silvio Berlusconi.

On Sunday, Zoff had come within 20 seconds of pulling off one of the coaching masterpieces of modern times, when only a 94th-minute equaliser by France deprived Italy of an almost totally unexpected European title. Even Italy's subsequent defeat by the world champions, thanks to David Trezeguet's extra time "golden goal", took little of the shine off the Italian coach's achievement.

Yet at the very moment the Italian football community was lavishing praise on Zoff, opposition leader Berlusconi chose Monday's AC Milan "presentation day" for next season to launch a bitter attack. Asked if he had watched Sunday's final, Berlusconi, the man likely to be Italy's next prime minister, replied:

"We should and could have won. There were certain things happening on the pitch that you could not ignore. You cannot leave the source of their game, Zidane, free to run the show and prompt all their actions, especially in a final. "Even an amateur coach would have realised what was happening and would have won the final by stopping Zidane. A professional coach cannot `not see' certain things. It was simply unworthy."

Zoff lost no time in replying. At a hastily convening news conference yesterday, he told reporters he had been "very upset" by the criticism and that he had been so angry he had been unable to sleep. "I don't understand why he (Berlusconi) has to denigrate somebody's else's work. A person, his profession and his professionalism have all been offended. I have been publicly denigrated and treated with huge disrespect and this really annoys me. "It is not Berlusconi's technical analysis, rather his personalised evaluations that have upset me."

Doubtless aware of the political overtones that his dramatic resignation might have, or might be interpreted as having, Zoff insisted his quarrel was with Berlusconi "the man" and not with his Forza Italia party.

Zoff did not say it, but doubtless he found Berlusconi's use of the words "amateur" and "unworthy" especially hard to take. A footballing legend in his lifetime as captain of Italy's 1982 World Cup winning side, Dino Zoff is nothing less than a national icon.

Bitterly criticised by the specialist sports media throughout the 10 months prior to Euro 2000, he had paid little or no attention to his critics, going on to defy them by producing a highly competitive Italian side at the European finals.

Analysing the finals in these pages, Irish Times and BBC commentator Mark Lawrenson had been one of many to suggest that Zoff had proved himself the "outstanding coach" at Euro 2000 for the manner in which he had earned maximum returns from relatively limited resources.

Zoff's handling of the Italian squad at Euro 2000 was quite simply exemplary, not only in relation to his inspired intuitions regarding team selection but also, and perhaps more importantly, in relation to the calm, controversy-free atmosphere that reigned at the Italians' training headquarters in Geel. How many coaches could have handled the potential time bomb prompted by the Francesco Totti v Alessandro Del Piero debate without eventually seeing it go off in his face?

Most commentators, too, were left speechless with incredulity by the specific criticism offered by Berlusconi in relation to Zidane. So successful was the Italy's handling of Zidane in Sunday's final that the great Frenchman had by far his worst game of the tournament, being consistently closed down by a midfield whose combative attitude to him largely contributed to a first half that was tense and dramatic but more stalemate than flamboyant.

Berlusconi's criticism, too, was entirely out of keeping with the national mood, as Zoff had been lavishly praised both by soccer professionals and by a whole variety of figures in public life, notwithstanding the national sense of disappointment at so narrowly losing the European title. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who was present in Rotterdam on Sunday night, perhaps caught the nation's mood more accurately by visiting the Italian players in their dressing-room after the game to tell them that they should return to Italy with their heads held high and "full of pride".

Furthermore, on Monday Ciampi nominated all 22 squad members Cavalieri Della Repubblica, an honour previously bestowed on the 1982 World Cup winning team by then president Sandro Pertini.

Even though Berlusconi yesterday tried to play down his original criticism of Zoff, saying that he would have remained silent had he thought that his comments would prompt the coach to resign, his role in Zoff's resignation inevitably and quickly developed into a political running sore.

Centre-left opposition leaders cited Berlusconi's ill-timed punditry as further proof of his questionable judgment on all matters, with senior Democratic Left figure Fabio Mussi speaking for many, fans and politicians alike, when he said:

"Zoff is someone with integrity. Berlusconi, on the other hand, is . . . inexorably Berlusconi."