Italians spitting mad at Totti

Popular legend in Italy has it that Francesco Totti's brains are all in his feet. He even lampooned himself by bringing out a book called "All the Totti jokes, collected by me".

Today, though, his dumb and dumber routine was no joke.

The player Italians would normally forgive anything is being slaughtered back home for a piece of ugly stupidity. Totti could not be spared a shred of sympathy for spitting in the face of a Danish opponent, Christian Poulsen, in Monday's draw.

As Paolo Rossi put it: "Absolutely unjustifiable. Spitting at an opponent is the worst act that can be committed on a football pitch." Totti knows it now. After picking up a three-match ban, he was today said by coach Giovanni Trapattoni to be "regretful and repentant". His team-mates will stand by 'Franco' with captain Fabio Cannavaro claiming Totti had been "provoked from the first minute with kicks, toe-treading and elbows".

That will cut no ice with a nation which can only see a selfish megarich star who has thrown Italy's hopes of even qualifying for the quarter-finals of Euro 2004 into jeopardy with Trapattoni forced into a wholesale restructuring for tonight's critical group C match against a rampant Sweden in Porto.

"Totti's madness" screamed the Gazzetta dello Sport while one Italian consumer group has already threatened to sue the Roma man for damages, claiming he has ruined the country's image. Sponsors, Pepsi and Nike, will be raging too.

If Italy lose in Porto tonight and Denmark beat Bulgaria in Braga, the Azzurri are out. If they survive and presuming the lawyers don't get any joy on appeal, Totti will only be able to return in the semi-finals. "We'll be waiting for him there," said Andrea Pirlo, the man most likely to replace him tonight. Yet should they make it to the last four, will there be an outcry to stick with the team which had got Italy there?

UEFA should have had the guts to make such questions redundant by banning him for the entire tournament, especially since they suspended Lazio's Sinisa Mihajlovic for eight games last November for spitting at Chelsea's Adrian Mutu in the Champions League.