WS: were you disappointed to beat France only on penalties in the Final?
Lippi: Not at all. Penalties represent a skill that, according to the rules, can decide a game. I'v been through plenty of penalty shoot-outs in my career - with Juventus against Ajax in 1996 I won a Champions League; at Old Trafford in 2003 I lost one [to Milan]. But a shoot-out says a lot about a team's mentality, its self-belief. For example, in Rome against Ajax, all my players looked me in the eye and tolde me they wanted to take one of the penalties because they all wanted to be part of the success. At Old Trafford, after a match in which we had not played that well, nobody looked me in the eye, some of the players were looking into the grandstand, some were looking down at their boots, so much so that I thought at one point, what do you want lads, will I take all five kicks myself? The point is that at Old trafford, my players didn't believe in it and, accordingly, we lost the shoot-out.
In Berlin all players wanted to take a penalty, even [keeper Gigi] Buffon said to me: "If you need me, I'll take one, boss." When I saw that, I was convinced we would win. But we did not prepare in any special way for penalties, we didn't practise them.
WS: Even after finding success, coaches still tend to be judged by pretty exacting standards.
Lippi: Yes. I took Juventus to four Champion League finals [he won the first and lost the others] yet somebody asked me after the fourth [against Milan in 2003] if I considered myself a loser. Yes, I said, a successful looser. To get to the Final that year, we had beaten Barcelona in the quarter-finals, and Real Madrid in the semi-finals, then you go and lose with the last kick of the shoot-out and someone tells you that you are a loser. I wonder about people sometimes...