TOULOUSE, France -- Italy won the 1982 World Cup through the extraordinary performance of a striker, Paolo Rossi, who just returned from a long ban for alleged match fixing.
France won it on home soil in 1998 despite a long, ugly and potentially debilitating battle with their football media. There were all-out hostilities between the L'Equipe group and coach Aime Jacquet, and I can testify, having spoken to the players, that they were prickly, aggressive and hostile.
Italy repeated their win-in-adversity World Cup triumph in 2006 despite their football being in utter chaos domestically, as scandals of referee influencing and match fixing culminated in mass raids and arrests just before Marcello Lippi's boys in blue triumphed in Berlin.