ROME — Well, I gambled and I won. I had the opportunity to watch this World Cup final from the Cote d’Azure, where I am covering the Tour de France, or else go to Rome where most of my friends live. I chose the latter. It could go either way, I thought, but the party is always going to be better southern side of the Alps, and after all, Italy is where I spent the last five years of my life. I left on Friday.

All weekend, Italians walked around dressed in azure, waving red-white-and-green flags. “Let them blow in the wind,” a patriot shouted through a megaphone next to Trajan’s forum.

This was Saturday, more than 24 hours before the game, and very unusual behavior for people who usually avoid nationalism at all costs. Until recently, they could not even mouth the words to their own national anthem.

But this was the World Cup. It felt as if the game was going to start at any moment — a prolonged, two-day purgatory between the Hell of another four years of shame and what-if’s, and a resurrection of 1982, when Italy defeated Germany in its last worldwide triumph.

The anticipation was taxing, but it was hard not to wax sentimental on

Yesterday afternoon, watching replays — over and over again — of Paolo Rossi‚ goal against the Germans, accompanied by crooner Ivano Fossati’s tear-jerking “Una Notte in Italia”(“A Night in Italy”). It will happen again, I thought.

Yesterday afternoon arrived, mercifully, putting an end to the fog horns and flag-waving for a nervous moment. Instead of walking five minutes down to the Collosseum and around the corner to the Circus Maximus, where tens of thousands of wine-soaked teenagers and grey-haired fans had congregated to wave the tricolore flags for the TV cameras and unite in chants, I decided to stay in my friend‚s apartment on Via Madonna dei Monti, next to the Imperial Forum, to hear the reaction from the living rooms of one of the capital‚s most populous and populist quarters.

On a normal Sunday, you can hear arguments and heated dinner conversations from neighboring houses as if they were in your own kitchen. On this Sunday, shouts from across the vicolo literally reverberated in your ears, as premature foghorns exploded every 30 minutes or so.

Eleven-year-old kids, dressed in jerseys emblazoned with Francesco Totti’s name, waved flags out the street‚s windows and screamed along to the words of the Italian national anthem — the lyrics that, just five years ago, teenagers in this nationalism-averse land never bothered to learn. Now, Italian pride boiled like I had never seen in some six years.

Faces disappeared from the windows and settled anxiously around the tube, tuned into RAI 1. Nervous chatter, and not long after, silence.

Zinedine Zidane, a one-time hero for Juventus fans scattered around the peninsula, stabbed the Romans in the back. He was awarded a penalty kick.

Goal. 1–0 France.

For the next 10 minutes, a very long ten minutes, you could hear the local restaurant owner clinking silverware onto his outdoor tables.

9:20 p.m. A roar. Materazzi had just evened the score. The neighborhood could breathe again.

I was about ready to sneak out to the Circus Maximus to see the rest of the game, when I hear a cheer from the alleyway. Toni had just landed a shot in the left corner. 2–1 Italy? No, no goal. He was called offside, the shouts outside subsided.

The clinking from the restaurant continued.

France and Italy exchange volleys for the next five minutes, and I worried about the lenghth of the walk to the Circo Massimo. Ten minutes is dangerously far away, I thought. Surely, I’ll miss the deciding goal.

There are no bars between the Imperial Forum and the Circus Maximus, so nervously I stopped for a sandwich at a tourist joint just outside, on Via Cavour. Americans, Swedes, Australians and Frenchmen made up the crowd outside the door, encircled by policemen anticipating, presumable, a riot. I ordered a white wine and a proscuitto-and-mozzarella sandwich. (The cashier, as usual tried to cheat me out of 15 euros change.)

“Nothing like in Paris,” I suggested to Gael Piquet, 34, and Ewen Guichard, 27, who were speaking in French and who happen to work in Rome, glued to the flat-screen TV.

“Are you kidding?”Piquet said,as the crowd of about 40 foreigners and Italians squeezed toward the screen.”Last week there were 50,000 watching on the big screen on the Champs d’Elysees.”

As I finished my white wine, the 30 minutes of extra time wound down to seconds.

This was it. The future of the transalpine rivalry, not to mention the championship of the world, was on the line. I went back to the TV at Via Madonna dei Monti 96, as the neighborhood awaited its fate.

Two hours before the game, I had accompanied my French friend, Emmanuelle, to the airport in Fiumicino, where she was boarding a plane for Nice. She had a one-hour layover in Milan, where she would be able to see most of the first half, and then would have to suffer some 90 minutes of media blackout over the Alps.

She called as the penalty kicks were about to begin.As it turned out she was kept on standby in Milan and would be able to watch the whole thing there.

“What’s the score?” She asked.

“I’ll call you back in five,” I said.

The shootout began.”

Emmanuelle calls. I don’t answer.

Totti: GOOOOOL! The family across the street roars.Their dog barks.

Henry: Goal. Del Piero: Goal. Sagnol: Goal. Score: 4–3.There is more nervous chatter from across the street. On TV, Italian coach Marcello Lippi clears the sweat from his glasses, as his team takes the decisive shot.

GOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!!

The apartment building literally shakes, as if an earthquake has hit the center of Rome.The fog horns blow.The old woman calls to her kids, running down the stairs, “Calma, ragazzi, calma.”

There are two minutes of silence, as the country gets prepared to explode. Italians are late even to a party.

“Champions of the world!” the voice on TV announces, to a living room long since evacuated. They’re already hooting away on their scooters in Piazza Venezia, too young to remember Paolo Rossi, too raptured to care.

jmoretti@nysun.com