Justice was done in the end - but by God it needed some help from paradox to get there.
How odd and contradictory for Italy that after 120 minutes in the semi-final and then another 93 in the final of mightily impressive defensive concentration and peerless goalkeeping, it should be howlers by the outstanding Cannavaro and the superb Toldo that saved France's lardon.
Some will feel sympathy for the Italians, but - even though they were excellent last night - not me.
Certainly they squeezed almost every ounce from their ability, but in this most enchanting tournament since Pele, Gerson and Jairzinho set the world alight in 1970, it would have been a huge shame had the ability to deny space and to block goal bound shots outshone flair and the search for goals.
All too often before, that is the way the cookie crumbled. In the 1982 World Cup, the lustrous Brazil of Zico, Eder and Socrates - a team poised, I think, to rival the 1970 one and the 1950s Hungarians as history's greatest - refused to compromise their attacking instincts and went down to Italian opportunism.
In 1990, a potentially scintillating Italy themselves let their natural self-doubt and neurosis undo them in the semi-final at the hands of a wretchedly unadventurous Argentina.
And, primus inter pares in the annals of injustice, in 1974 West Germany's organisation and resilience edged out the glorious fluency and invention of the Dutch.
Cruyff's Holland came to mind last night when France were compelled by concern - desperation would be wrong; they never panicked - to play a version of total football: with 22 minutes remaining, the player who turned up on the left wing, and nearly finding Laurent Blanc with his cross, was Blanc's colleague in central defence Marcel Dessaily.
That was a joy to behold, and another came when, driven on by Zinedine Zidane's will, France did what I've never seen any team do in golden goal extra-time before and went unreservedly for the win.
If France didn't look the all-time great side they have become last night that was because Italy didn't let them; but they deserved the victory for that attacking instinct alone.
Had Italy held on, it would have been a victory for resilience over flair, and history would record that a tournament illuminated by Zidane and Thierry Henry, Luis Figo, Rui Costa, Pavel Nedved, Alfonso, Patrick Kluivert, was won by the defenders and goalkeeper of a team whose strength was stifling talent rather than unveiling it.
It was very, very close in Rotterdam last night, and on the balance of play perhaps France were fortunate. But ultimately it was not only justice but, as importantly, romance that had a golden ending . . . and even if David Trezeguet's ferocious lash was only 20 carat gold to Carlos Alberto's 24 carats in Mexico city, it is 30 long years since the conclusion of a major tournament tempted anyone to declare that.
Come in Kev, your space-time is up
Contrasting reactions to football defeat bring to mind one of those sci-fi movies in which, due to some chink in the fabric of the space-time continuum, two people swap lives.
(I haven't seen the film, and unless it's showing during a bout of wild insomnia on an intercontinental flight I never will, but I've a feeling something of the kind happened between Tom Hanks and a small boy in Big.)
Kevin Keegan managed, or mismanaged, England to one of their more humiliating tournament displays, and he remains in his job.
Frank Rijkaard's Holland, meanwhile, exit after a semi-final they richly deserved to win - and this after the Netherlands sparkled brilliantly against France and Yugoslavia - and within 10 minutes he has resigned.
Perhaps Professor Hawking has some idea how the fabric of the space-time continuum might be repaired so that normality is restored, so that Mr Keegan might move on to more suitable work while the hugely promising Dutch coach leads his country to glory in the next World Cup.
