"Et por quoi?! ET POR QUOI?!?!"

In other news, the World Cup final delivered a satisfying conclusion. No, not because one of my countries of ancestry won the cup and not because we didn’t see Brazil win again (thank God), but rather because this game contained possibly the most hysterical, bizarre, inexplicable yet strangely fitting climax I’ve seen in a while: the Zinedine Zidane headbutt.
I mean, let’s be serious here – Zinedine Zidane is one of the greatest soccer players of at least the past twenty years. He delivered France its only World Cup title eight years ago and was on the verge of doing it again, this time with a French team no one thought had a chance to get out of group play, much less score a goal at one point. And I mean, we see people come up short in situations like this. Look at the World Series last year – Biggio and Bagwell had sentiment on their side and the Astros had battled through the postseason only to be embarrassed by Bobby Jenks’ fastball and a light-hitting outfielder who suddenly thought he was Reggie Jackson. Or take Karl Malone’s last hurrah with the Lakers. Things don’t always have storybook endings. Look at Michael Jordan’s second comeback or Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath’s ignonimous career endings (for the record, I’m talking about Namath’s year with the LA Rams, not his decidedly one-sided 2003 sideline tryst with Suzy Kolber; though this incident did make Suzy Kolber strangely attractive to me in spite of the fact that she talks like a wrestling announcer).
But Zidane’s headbutt is beyond any of this. His international career doesn’t simply end with a loss, which is how these things usually go. No, Zidane’s career ended in the same fashion as Joe Theismann’s (though the only way Zidane’s headbutt would have been as traumatic as that horrific scene would’ve been if Materrazi’s heartbeat had been interrupted and he had died on the field) – in an utterly unforgettable spectacle akin to an on-field supernova.
This whole scene reminded me a lot of what ESPN’s Bill Simmons wrote when he previewed this year’s Spurs-Kings opening round playoff series. Simmons said that he expected the series to go seven games, but that the Kings would ultimately come up short in the seventh game. He said this would likely happen after Ginobili flopped while guarding Artest, followed by Artest helping him up and then body-slamming him to the floor without changing his expression at all. When you think about it, this is exactly what Zidane did in a lot of ways.
Watch the video – Zidane’s expression never changes the entire time (even when Mazterrazi appears to give him a titty-twister), and the way in which he goes about the attack is just exceedingly non-chalant.
Here’s something else to chew on – precisely how were these two communicating. I mean, here you have a Frenchman and an Italian – I highly doubt that Zidane was speaking Italian, and I don’t think Materrazi would even attempt to speak French. In that case, this means that this entire exchange was probably carried out in extremely broken English. I like to imagine Materrazi, in a thick Italian accent, gesturing his hands wildly and saying something like “YOU-A DIRTY ALGERIAN, I FUCK-A YOUR MOTHER” while Zidane calmly mutters “Sacre Bleu” (in the same tone as Napoleon in the water slide in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure) and rams his forehead into Materrazi’s sternum.
I don’t see why people are surprised that Zidane did this, either. This is the same guy who stomped on a Saudi Arabian player during a World Cup match in 1998 for no apparent reason.
A lot of people are probably going to say that this headbutt sullies Zidane’s legend in some way. I don’t really see it that way. Look at it like this: The average person doesn’t know who Ron Artest is because of his basketball playing ability; there are players who play similarly to Artest, and these aren’t the kind of players who are typically household names. However, people know Artest because of this, for Christ’s sake.
The average person in America doesn’t give a rat’s ass about soccer, even when the World Cup is on. They’re not going to remember who won, even if it’s the United States (and something tells me that in the bizarre parallel universe where this has actually occurred, people still care more about the Red Sox and Yankees playing chicken with bullpen carts). But I’ll guarantee you one thing – they’ll sure as hell remember the crazy guy who headbutted an opponent in the chest.