Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
In the dying minutes of the World Cup finals, France’s national hero and team captain Zinedine Zidane stunned the world in a shocking display of unsportsmanlike conduct when he head-butted Italian Marco Materazzi and whipped up a media frenzy.
Lip readers were called in to figure out what words were exchanged between the two that provoked the famous head-butt but drew a blank and some newspapers even had psychoanalysts probing Zidane mind!
For us hacks and headline writers it was fun to pun and there were some gems. For bloggers, it was time to capture football history in slow-mo. But the one that was doing the rounds with the cheeky suggestion that Zidane had charged into Marco like a raging bull because he was “felt up” was way over the top. But in 24 hours the video clip was taken off the Net. So much for freedom of expression!
There were also emotional outbursts on the lines of ‘Zizou, why did you do it?’ to a lot of intelligent word-play around ‘head’. Zidane’s moment of disgrace will now, for quite some time, be dissected, debated and voted on by the media — from Dubai to Delhi, Bahrain to Bahamas and Washington to Wellington. How could the hero have fallen so low? If only Zidane had used his head and counted till ten, national pride — and his own — could have been saved and perhaps the Cup would have been in France and not Italy. But there can be no ifs and buts. He did it. He lost his head in a fit of rage. And he has to pay the price.
But does France care? The French public sentiment is with Zidane; and the idealists in blogosphere feel that the French team, with its mix of races, had the moral right to win.
As for us on the sidelines, who watched one month of football and saw ‘spirits’ go further up with every extra time played, the bottom line is simple: The head-butt has sustained interest in a game, which otherwise would have been second-fiddled to the monstrously boring cricket Test matches.
The Marco-Zizou controversy will take some time to die and the media will have a field day digging up and dishing the dirt on both to feed hungry readers who love nothing better than a controversy.
Marco has come out with his version of the exchange but Zizou has remained tight-lipped — so far. Will he clear the air? Who knows? What we do know is that Fifa, which had organised a brilliant World Cup, fouled big time by awarding the Golden Boot to the head-butter. He did not deserve it, not after what he did. Besides, this is not the first time Zidane has lost control and flexed his muscles. The balding Marseille born football genius has a history of losing his temper under stress. During the 1998 World Cup playoffs, he received a red card for stomping on a player from Saudi Arabia and had to walk the walk of shame as he did again on July 9 this year.
For Zidane, what might have been a victory roar has ended in a whimper. What a way to go!
Patrick Michael claims to be a journalist of some repute, we of course don’t believe him...do you?
