Italy beat France to win the World Cup final in July, avenging France's "golden goal" victory over the Azurri which handed it the European Championship trophy in 2000.

The sides meet at the Stade de France on Thursday in a Group B encounter which some have labelled a revenge match.

Many of the France players have played down that suggestion, but statements by AC Milan's Gattuso will not help smooth the prickly relations between the two cozuntries.

"When we lost the Euro 2000 10 seconds from the end we didn't go around moaning about it afterwards," said Gattuso at Italy's training ground near Florence overnight.

"It's true that we usually find it a bit hard to swallow defeats, but they (France) are a lot worse.

"At least on that score, Italy come runner-up to France," added Gattuso, who has scored just one goal in 48 international appearances.

Earlier, France defender Lilian Thuram said it had deserved to win the World Cup final.

"We should have won that final. I wouldn't call it a historical glitch, but at least on the pitch we were the team which performed better.

"Really, the best team on the night didn't win," he said.