Zinedine Zidane has been in the news a lot lately. That is not because of his glorious past in soccer, or because he is retiring from soccer both at the national level as well as the club level. On the contrary, he has become a fodder of jokes in the Internet, online games, and late night comedy shows. Plenty of serious articles have been written also on him, and not on what a great a player he has been, or how he has led the whole French team to World Cup final.
The whole world was shocked when he head butted Materazzi in the chest. They were more shocked when when the referee showed the red card and asked him out of the game. It was his last game of his life as a professional soccer player and he could not be part of it for the full time.
After the game was over, however, he still got the Golden Ball award. But there are controversies brewing stemming from that particular incident.
It should to be noted that when Zidane rammed at Matterazi's chest with his head, he did not use his legs or hands. Remember, this is soccer and using the hands is illegal in the game mostly. Only the goalkeeper is allowed to use his hands liberally and I bet if he were the goalkeeper he would have simply used his hands in this case. Use of his leg probably is not very palatable. So he used his head instead.
But jokes apart, I am amazed how easily he lost concentration during the crucial moments of the World Cup final. I am not much of a sports person. I never excelled in any sports, despite dabbling in many of them. I have always thought great players also had great concentration.
In my childhood I read a great story and even today I feel enlightened when I think of it. When guru Dronaacharya gave enough archery lessons to all five pandav brothers he decided to take a simple test to judge their devotion to the sport. So he took all of them to a tree and asked them to shoot down a toy bird at the top. Everyone had their turn to fire at the bird. Some of them missed, but some hit the target.
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Article comments
1 - Douglas Mays
hhhmmm...exactly my view on the whole deal. Whatever it was that set Zidane off, retaliate with zen powered excellence and ram the ball into the back of the net.
Although he used his head, not hands or legs, the rules of soccer are based on playing the ball, not the man.
Jersey tugging? Yeah, so what. That is part of the game a bit. Intimidation is also. Zidane reacted to intimidation wrong. He could have turned it around. But, he does have an anger management problem, as seen thru his career.
2 - Namesake
I thought when Zidane said he would exchange the shirt after the game with Materazzi was sarcasm. Materazzi said Zidane said that sentence with arrogance, so perhaps it was a sarcasm being hurled at Materazzi.
3 - we love u zidane
any way he is the man and he is the best player in the world