Italy find strength in sorrow

Via Scotslman
THE flags were out even before Italy's players unfurled one of their own. "Gianluca, pensiamo voi", we are thinking of you, read one at the Italy end, while another simply read, "Gianluca". After Friday night's 3-0 win over Ukraine, Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro was given another flag, an Italian tricolore with the words, "Pessottino, siamo con te", we are with you, on it. When the crowd saw it, they burst into applause.

The spirit within the Italian camp is no longer as strong as it is because of the parallels to their last World Cup success, in 1982: back then, they started slowly, were facing a match-fixing scandal back home and their main striker Paolo Rossi failed to score for four games before he burst into life from the quarter-finals onwards to win the Golden Boot.

No, everything changed in the Italian squad on Tuesday afternoon, when their former Juventus and Italy team-mate Gianluca Pessotto jumped 50 feet from the roof of the Juventus HQ and landed on former vice-president Roberto Bettega's Alfa car in an apparent suicide attempt. Cannavaro left that day's press conference in tears while his country and club-mates Alex Del Piero and Gianluca Zambrotta flew back to Turin to visit the critically-ill former defender

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Teddy's Opinion: The scandal and Pessotto's jump seem to have positive effect to Italy. They want to win the title to overcome the unhappiness