2006 FIFA World Cup Final 2006 FIFA World Cup Final The 2006 FIFA World Cup Final was a football match that took place on 9 July 2006 at the Olympiastadion, Berlin, Germany, to determine the winner of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Italy beat France 5–3 on penalties after the match finished 1–1 after extra time. France's Zinedine Zidane was sent off in his last-ever match, for headbutting Italy's Marco Materazzi's chest in retaliation to Materazzi's verbal provocation. It was the first final since 1978 in which neither Germany nor Brazil competed (and the second since 1938); it was also the first all-European final since
2006 FIFA World Cup seeding farther than the seedings predicted, Portugal going on to reach the semi-finals. 2006 FIFA World Cup seeding To calculate the seeding for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, FIFA used the FIFA World Rankings in combination with performances of national teams in the two previous World Cups. Points were allocated on the basis of 32 for the best achieving of the 32 qualifiers for 2006 FIFA World Cup in each of the five fields considered, down to one for the lowest ranking. The seedings table uses these points obtained from the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2002 FIFA World Cup