Zinedine Zidane The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Hero

In the 110th minute of the World Cup final, 12 tense Italians sit around a big screen TV a restaurant in downtown Manhattan shouting at the players on the field, “Vai, vai, subito!” Suddenly the action stops; the Italian defender, Marco Materazzi, is on the ground. Buffon, the goal keeper, runs out of his box pointing and yelling angrily, and his teammates Cannevaro, Del Piero, Gattuso gather around the referee gesticulating wildly. We look at each other puzzled and ask, “Che succede?” What’s happening? What’s the big deal? It’s just another player down. Then we see it: the instant replay. The room erupts in anger and disbelief; untranslatable curses fill the air. The Univision commentator shouts, “No es normal! No es normal!” No, it wasn’t normal. It was freakishly abnormal. The great French football hero, in the last minutes of the last game of his career, had just driven his head and body full force into the Italian player for what seemed like no good reason.

A second replay attempted to shed some light on the bizarre attack: A defensive move, words exchange. So far pretty typical football, we think. Then we see it spelled out: Zidane running on ahead, turning, planting his feet, waiting for Materazzi to approach, and—BAM! “OOOH!” We cry out, clutching our chests in unison. This wasn’t the usual hotheaded shoving about, this looked cool and premeditated. Our faces morph into question marks. What? Why? How? Huh? My eyes water even as I cry foul. Foul that Materazzi was assaulted so hatefully and foul that it was my beautiful Zizou who had done the hateful act. “They’re sure taking their time with the red card,” the commentator argues in Spanish. “RED CARD, RED CARD!” the room roars. My head is spinning—Dear God, is it really going to end like this? Finally, the FIFA official walks toward Zizou, his hand in his back pocket. The commentator repeats excitedly, “Ahí viene la roja! Ahí viene la roja!—Here comes the red card!” The room murmurs in anticipation, then whoops as the referee hoists the red card over Zidane’s head. I collapse into my chair. “Adiós, Zinédine! Adiós Zidane! Adiós al fútbol!” the television voice chants gleefully as Zidane, head bowed, walks off the field past the World Cup trophy, grumbling and peeling tape off his hands. “Your Zidane was a bad boy,” comes a text message from my friend Matthew. Yes, he was. A really bad boy. Angry and watery-eyed, I sat in my Italian jersey, the only one in the room mourning Zinédine Zidane’s abrupt and shameful exit from our lives. Sure I wanted Italy to win, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow God sacrificed my beloved Zizou in exchange.

“We still can’t quite believe that the last act of an artist’s career should have been an assault,” Le Parisien bemoaned the next day. “We were left speechless by such stupidity,” Le Figaro complained about Zidane’s “final and odious headbutt.” L’Equipe called it “stupid” and “irreparable.” If fact, we all felt betrayed and angry, didn’t we? Our hero had fallen. Or more accurately, he had felled himself. Our perfect, brilliant, wonderful Zizou has just pissed all over us, thumbed his nose at us, at his teammates, his country, his career. It was not supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be better than this, bigger than this. He was supposed to give us an exit worthy of his career, something we could hang on to, tell our grandchildren about. He owed us that, didn’t he?

Weeks later there is still much debate. Why do we care so much? We care because when a hero falls in our eyes, we lose our own sense of self. We’re forced to face our own weaknesses. Heroes are signposts. They tell us who we should be, and how we are meant to behave. They strive and fly high while we watch and aspire. They live our lives out loud for us. Of course, there is one major flaw in this. We create our heroes; they don’t create themselves. We need them, but we need them to be what we want them to be. We (the media, the fans, and the highly-paid PR firms) decide the story, the behavior, the packaging. Zinédine Zidane’s package: The kid from the mean streets of Marseille who made good. A symbol for poor kids everywhere. The brilliant, handsome, soft-spoken, humble gentleman of the sport, all wrapped up in Christian Dior. Sure, it looks good on the hero, but somewhere underneath a man is itching to get out. And on July 9th, that man burst forth, thrusting his head right through his own iconic hero image. Was it an act of rebellion? Or more disturbingly, self-destruction? Was Zidane saying he’s not worthy? If Zidane’s not worthy, what does that make us? 
 
No, the hero must be redeemed. In the days following the fateful match, the PR machine and our own psyches got to work reconstructing the hero and stuffing the man back into that uncomfortable suit of perfection. “Damage control” we call it in the biz. Too many people hang on Zizou to let him go down. Soon, wild rumors began to circulate that Materazzi made racial slurs, a claim that even Zidane denies. Still, threats were made on the Italian’s life and the focus shifted nicely off Zidane to Materazzi as the new offender—a red card being exchanged for a red herring. The real point is not that Zidane headbutted an opponent in a World Cup match, the point is that Materazzi made ethnic and personal epithets. A new scandal is created and a once clear-cut case of foul on the field is turned into an international incident. You need a villain in order to have a hero.

And of course, heroes do not attack without good reason. It’s not his fault, Zizou insists in an interview on French television. He’s just a victim of harsh words. “Sometimes words are harder than blows,” he says. In fact, on zidane.fr, one may still be able to hear him explain himself in his own words. His fan site scrambled to post his explanations and apologies, preempting the site’s normal content. “Zizou s’explique…” reads the graphic. In video footage from the July 12 interviews on TF1, Zidane, looking stunningly fashionable and squeaky clean-shaven, apologizes to children everywhere and to the spectators who saw the incident. “The reaction must be punished,” he admits, but not without laying full blame on Materazzi for provoking him. Simply put: The devil made me do it. This explanation apparently worked magic on FIFA. Although they suspended the now retired star three matches, they also fined Materazzi two, even without sound evidence—apparently, for forcing Zidane’s hand (or should I say, head). This controversial ruling may clean up the mouths of players everywhere—or wipe the field clean of players.

To further exonerate our hero, Mehana Mouhou, a French lawyer, presents a compelling legal argument to expunge the red card altogether, essentially asking the question: If a player headbutts an opponent and no official sees it with his own eyes, did it really happen? Mouhou plans to bring a legal suit against FIFA, citing that the fourth official watched the assault on replay, which is against the rules. (FIFA denies this claim.) The logic: If it is found that the official ruled illegally, “…Zidane should never have been sent off and it would be impossible to predict what the match result would have been and [the game] should be replayed.”

Comment dit-on, “sour grapes?” Perhaps the real question is: If the French captain had not been red-carded for his offense, and Les Bleus had won, would that be a victory France could be proud of? How far do we go to defend our hero? Who are we really protecting? Are we afraid of losing face if our hero is less than perfect or more accurately, perfectly human?

But what about the man? What has he lost in the process? As Zidane shifted the blame to another to save his hero face, he risked losing something more important: our respect. Respect for the man. Because in the final analysis, it’s how a man owns his mistakes that makes him a real hero. ”He made me do it” is not the explanation a man gives, it’s the cry of a little boy. Regardless of what Materazzi might have said, ultimately Zidane’s fate was in his own hands. He made a choice. It just wasn’t the choice we wanted him to make. But, what better way to make amends, what better example to set for “children everywhere” than to take responsibility for yourself, utterly. If you can’t be a hero, at least be a man. That’s plenty good enough, especially if the man is Zinédine Zidane.

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PEOPLE ARE (STILL) TALKING
Football fans comment on the headbutt heard round the world and how they feel about Zidane after the interview on French TV and the FIFA ruling.

P.  Barrault, French restaurateur says of Zidane now, “I forgave him for what he did even though [France] lost. I still respected him; he’s a great player. But if it’s true that he blames Materazzi for his actions then I have to say I cannot respect him. Be a man and take responsibility for yourself.”

“It’s bulls**t,” A. Perez., a personal trainer and athlete blurted out in plain language when I asked her what she thought about Zidane’s comments. “Trash talk is a part of almost every game. You take it; you tune it out. This is professional sports! If you start suspending everyone who mouths off at a game, you’d have no players left. I’m embarrassed for him.”

“It would be a mistake to call what Zidane did an act of blind rage. It implies possession from outside sources. He was cool and determined,” D. Monahan explains to me in a thick “New Yorkah” accent that belies his eloquence. “He headbutted Materazzi like he was making a penalty kick. You know—focused, accurate, effective. I wouldn’t expect any less from him. He should own it. It was cool.”

B. Baldassarri, an Italian football fan commented, “If Materazzi really said such things, then it’s not nice at all. But it doesn’t make it OK to do what Zidane did. I mean, it’s normal to talk like that on the field. Everyone does it, even Zidane.”

“Even the 9-year-olds on my daughter’s soccer team taunt each other,” S. Krup, a father of two soccer-playing girls laughs. “There’s no excuse for what he did. He was in a pissy mood the whole game. It was pure ego. He was just mad because Buffon blocked his big goal.”

S. Krup makes a good point. What if the headbutt was not really about Materazzi at all, but residual anger at his teammate, Buffon, who foiled what would have been Zidane’s golden goal, the crowning goal of his career, the goal that could have won France the Cup? What if Zidane has a monumental ego like every other superstar and it was wounded that day. Or what if he provoked Materazzi first? Don’t forget that red card he garnered in the ’98 World Cup. What do you think the Saudi said to deserve that stomping? Perhaps Zinédine Zidane is a hot-tempered guy from the mean streets of Marseilles who happens to play a damn good game of ball. Would that be such a bad thing? Sure the headbutt was disappointing and in spite of what the French say, probably lost them the game, but it doesn’t make him less of a hero. But blaming another for his actions might make him less of a man.