Flag-waving crowds waited for hours in blazing sunshine on Monday to give Italy's triumphant football team a rapturous welcome as it arrived back on native soil.
Fans, many of them children wearing their heroes' blue jersies, cheered wildly as captain Fabio Cannavaro stepped off the plane and held aloft the gold World Cup trophy.
As the 23 players, looking dashing in their black Dolce & Gabbana suits, walked across the tarmac, Italian air force jets roared overhead and painted a huge Italian flag in the sky with coloured smoke.
After being greeted formally by the mayor of Rome and other officials, coach Marcello Lippi and his squad were whisked away on a bus to central Rome, where they were to be congratulated by Premier Romano Prodi.
But their progress was slowed by thousands of fans who surrounded the bus and its escort on the main road into the city.
As part of the celebrations, the team was scheduled to ride on an open-top bus through the city centre, where thousands of flag-draped fans were waiting to catch a glimpse of their idols.
Festivities were due to reach their climax in the evening with a huge party at Circus Maximus, the ancient Roman chariot-racing circuit where massive crowds had watched the World Cup final the night before. A more subdued salute came from Gianluigi Pessotto, the former Juventus and Italy player who shocked the team and the nation by trying to commit suicide during the early phase of the World Cup.
Pessotto, who had just begun a director's job at Juventus, is in a stable but serious condition in a Turin hospital and was unable to watch his nation's triumph in Germany. "I told him this morning," said his doctor. "He smiled and made the victory sign with his hand". Politicians rushed on Monday to heap praise on the team that won Italy its fourth World Cup and there were calls for official honours for the players.
President Giorgio Napolitano, who went to Berlin for the final, announced in the evening that the entire squad would in fact be awarded one of the Republic's top honours. He said the squad had "united" the country, restoring a sense of "national identity and pride".
Meanwhile, an exultant Prodi reportedly said he expected the 'feel-good' effect of the victory would boost GDP this
year by 0.3%. Despite the jubilant scenes, hanging in the background was a football match-rigging scandal that has recently shown the world another side of the national game.
After last week's hearings in Rome's Olympic stadium, the verdicts of a sports tribunal are expected perhaps as early as Tuesday. Juventus risks going down to Serie C and three others Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio - could drop to Serie B.
Although this would be a strange fate for the nation's soccer stars, players and coach admitted on Monday that the scandal probably helped drive them on. Midfielder Gennaro Gattuso was among those who said the 'Azzurri' would probably not have won the World Cup had the team not been galvanised by a desperate desire to rise above the grim picture that had been painted of the national sport.
Some 13 out of the 23 players being feted on Monday currently play for clubs involved in the scandal. Juventus, the worst hit squad, boasts five players in Lippi's squad, including captain Fabio Cannavaro and goalie Gianluigi Buffon.
