Zidane, apologies but no regrets

Zizou speaks, the world (at least the French) listens. I watched the four-minute interview that he had on 7/12 with the French TV show Canal + Plus; it was available on his website www.zidane.fr. I also watched part of a longer interview that he gave the French TV network TF1 (available at its website http://tf1.lci.fr); it kept breaking up, so I didn’t watch the whole thing. (Both interviews were in French, of course).

Zinédine Zidane’s explanation of his behavior in head-butting the Italian player Marco Materazzi in the championship match of the 2006 World Cup was that he was provoked by insulting remarks made by Materazzi, about Zidane’s mother and sister. He said that Materazzi had been making such remarks during the match and that he (Zidane) finally reacted.

He apologized for the incident especially to the children who might have been watching and to his fans, but he said that he didn’t regret it because it was a reaction to the insultes très graves by Materazzi. He added, "Would I have done something unprovoked within the last ten minutes of my career as a player?"

There was a blizzard of comments by sports figures and the news media about his sentiments expressed in the interviews. BBC News published an interesting--and occasionally amusing--summary of the comments (posted on its website http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk). Some quotes from the BBC article:

It had the makings of an address to the nation from the head of state. Across the country, families gathered around TV sets; in bars they ordered extra drinks. The sports daily L’Equipe ran a cartoon of Zidane sitting behind an ornate desk, alongside a French flag–as if about to speak from the Elysee Palace (the residence of France’s president).

Zidane’s refusal to repeat the exact words (used by Materazzi) still has everyone guessing.

The article noted that most newspapers were "reverential" in their stories and editorials about Zidane and his interviews. However, one took a different tack–the left-wing Liberation commented that a similar situation occurred in the 1988 World Cup championship match when a leading player on the British team (which was playing Argentina), David Beckham, was redcarded, but, unlike Zidane, Beckham "was contrite, recognising that he had damaged his team." "‘Zidane did no such thing yesterday (in his interviews),’ says Liberation. ‘He did not have a word for his team-mates, whom he perhaps cost the World Cup.’"

So, now that the World Cup is over, and Zizou has told his story, and the French public and press have had their say about his story, perhaps the world will again turn on its axis.