China's month of all-nighters ends in a damp squib

BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) China's exhausting month of late nights, early mornings and obsession with every kick of a ball in Germany finally drew to a close at 4.41am local time today.

After four weeks in which the World Cup finals have been blamed for death, divorce, drunkenness, traffic accidents and even facial paralysis, Chinese soccer fans completed the final night's vigil in front of their television sets.

With their national team failing to qualify and Brazil -- the adopted favourites of a majority of Chinese -- already knocked out, most were impartial viewers of the Italy-France match.

BUMPER PAYDAY Thunder storms in the capital and torrential rain sweeping across the East of the country further dampened the atmosphere, keeping many at home for the climax of the tournament and denying bars a bumper final payday.

Even television commentator Huang Jianxiang, who created a storm of his own with his pro-Italian rant at the end of their second round tie against Australia, was muted in his reaction to the Fabio Grosso penalty that won the shootout in Berlin.

''Italy win the World Cup,'' he said, his voice betraying none of the emotion he displayed when the same player won a last minute spot-kick to put the Italians into the quarter-finals.

''See you again in four years,'' he signed off.

State-run CCTV were still running highlights of the finals throughout today, perhaps in a bid to reach their anticipated accumulative audience of 10 billion.

Adverts featuring Ronaldinho and Ronaldo endorsing products such as computers and throat lozenges have become ubiquitous on buses and billboards in Beijing in recent months.

Brazil's lacklustre performance in their quarter-final against France was a huge disappointment to their Chinese fans and conspiracy theories have abounded as to why.

The bad news did not end there for those who backed the Brazilians in illegal bets as China police claim to have smashed several internet gambling rings during the tournament.

State news agency Xinhua reported that one of the nine computers seized in Beijing was found to have attracted more than 100 million yuan (12.52 million dollars) in World Cup bets in a month.

Police in southwestern province of Guizhou said they had broken up four rings based in Macao and Taiwan, while in Chengdu, police shamed an operation operated by a Hong Kong-based Web site which they said had attracted one billion yuan in bets.

Unfortunately for China, passion for the World Cup does not guarantee participation in it.

''I've learnt a lot from watching the World Cup but there is still a lot more we need to learn,'' China's coach Zhu Guanghu wrote in an online column, prompting one fan to retort: ''Confucius says 'You are never too old to learn'. We'll certainly keep learning but it seems we'll never graduate.'' REUTERS PM RS1554