  The lightest scalar and pseudoscalar nonets are discussed within the
framework of the broken U3$\times$U3 linear sigma model, and it is shown that
already at the tree level this model works remarkably well predicting scalar
masses and couplings not far from present experimental values, when all
parameters are fixed from the pseudoscalar masses and decay constants. It is
argued that this strongly suggests that the light and very broad $\sigma$
resonance exists near 500 MeV.
