He’s the best European player since, well, since Platini really, and today Zinedine Zidane will play in his last game, not only for France, but his last ever game as a proffesional footballer.
The Observer tributes the great man, in this leader from Observer Sport monthly.
Brilliant head-butter too ! What was said to him, one must ask, for him to do that !!!
And he fell prey to his opponent’s ruse, who let himself drop.
I presume nerves on the last day of his active career played a foolish trick on Zidane. Pity.
Anyhow France deserved to have won, but as you all know soccer is so and many times matches are won by ruse rather than by skill. Referees also have a large slice of the problem pudding.
I think your presumption about “nerves” is incorrect, Jose.
I’m sure something was said to him which was simply ‘beyond the pale’.
For me, Zidane is now more than a great footballer.
Even if he was insulted, Symonds, Zidane has enough experience to give a deaf ear to those attitudes on the part of rivals, the more so when it was quite a decisive match. He has always been a gentleman on the field.
I agree with you, Jose - Zidane has always been a footballing “gentleman”, and he has been a seasoned enough professional “to give a deaf ear” to the likes of that Italian.
Even so, his instinctive response was so immediate and so instantaneous, that it really makes one wonder not just what was said, but also whether what was said should simply not be tolerated, and eradicated from the game.
If France had been losing, then one could explain away the ‘head-butt’ quite easily - but not at that stage of the game.
Yes, I agree. It has to be done. Soccer fans themselves should force radical changes in these ways of behaviour in and out of the fields. I have always been a football fan, even was a member in my youth of official organisms, but the importance of money in football - as is in all other sports including the Olympics - made me see soccer as a business rather than a sport.