DORTMUND, Germany -- After he converted a last-minute penalty to beat
Australia in the second round, Francesco Totti said it still wasn't his career
highlight.
Winning the "scudetto" -- the top Italian league title -- with AS Roma in
2001 kept that place in his heart.
Maybe he'll have a new top highlight if Italy wins the World Cup on Sunday.
Totti, who is still regaining his form from left leg surgery, played all 120
minutes of Italy's 2-0 extra time win over Germany in the semifinals Tuesday.
"It's the realization of a dream, we only need a little but more to make
history," Totti said.
In the first two minutes of the first extra period, Italy hit the goal frame
twice. Then Fabio Grosso's goal put Italy ahead one minute from the end and
Alessandro Del Piero added another score in injury time to avoid a penalty
shootout.
"On the second shot off the crossbar I started to have some bad thoughts. But
we kept on believing and kept on attacking and we got two extremely important
goals. It's an indescribable feeling," Totti said.
"Before Grosso's goal when there was only a minute left I was already
thinking about how I was going to shoot my penalty, Totti added.
Totti still has about 10 screws and a metal support rod holding the bones
together in his left leg. He had a good first half but clearly grew fatigued as
the match wore on.
"We believe until the end, we have the conviction that we can win at any
moment of the game," he said.
SCOLARI NO BRAZIL BOSOM BUDDY: Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari dismissed
rumors that he will again lead his native Brazil after the World Cup.
Portugal faces France on Wednesday in a World Cup semifinal in Munich.
"I don't think about Brazil, I don't think about Portugal and I don't think
about any other national team," Scolari said Tuesday. "I'm thinking about
winning this next match, which would be historic for the Portuguese."
Scolari, who is contracted to Portugal through July, led Brazil to the 2002
World Cup title in South Korea and Japan.
The Brazilian also denied having reached an agreement to remain as Portugal
coach after the World Cup.
"I'm very happy and very satisfied with my life right now," Scolari said.
"It's almost 100 percent what I had projected earlier in my career. The work
atmosphere is very, very good. I'm with the same group of players for the past
three years, and I have the respect of 99 percent of the Portuguese people."
BETTER SECURITY THROUGH CHEMISTRY: Police at Berlin's fan festival have been
testing a new device designed to detect chemical and biological threats --
giving it a dress rehearsal for the World Cup final.
The 154-pound portable device, named Sigis 2, can detect 200 different
chemical compounds from a distance of 3 miles.
"It's really doing a job tonight but it is also a practice for the final,"
said Lars Haase, a chemical engineer for the Berlin police's forensic
department.
About a million people gathered on the capital's "Fan Mile" on Tuesday to
watch as Germany lost to Italy 2-0 in the semifinals, played in Dortmund. The
capital will host the final on Sunday.
The device is designed to detect any substances as soon as they are released
-- alerting officials to evacuate the public. How much time a chemical would
take to travel 3 miles would depend on the wind and other weather conditions.
"It can take just one minute or half an hour," Haase said. "It could be
difficult to evacuate all the people here quickly, but at least we would know
what the substance was."
The device's catalog of substances can be updated. At the fan festival, it
has detected perfume -- but it cannot make out sweat.
"So far we haven't detected anything we didn't want to," Haase said.
SACRE BLEUS!: The French parliament, too, has caught the World Cup bug.
An enormous blue and white banner reading "Allez la France" was unfurled
Tuesday across the gilded fence of the domed and columned parliament
headquarters on the Seine River.
Now the Assemblee Nationale, a prominent feature on the Paris landscape, will
be ready for Wednesday's semifinal against Portugal.
