Headbutting an Italian

Zenedine Zidane, my new anti-hero

I've been watching a lot of sports lately. After five years of sucking, the Mets are one of the best, and definitely the most exciting, teams in baseball, and they are on every night on their own new SNY network, a combination that, for me, is what cocaine and baking powder was to Pooky.

What about going and playing outside? Well, look...I work, which for me is the new play, all day installing solar panels on rooftops. I come home sunbaked and tired, so any guilt I feel about being a couch potato in my free time does not keep me from sleeping at night to wake up and do it all again.

Plus, there's the babies. Andre can't take a decent nap unless he is lying on somebody's lap. If I use Andre's lap-napping strategically, I can look like a good Dad while wasting a beautiful Sunday sitting on a Laz-Y-Boy watching Federer whup Nadal at Wimbledon, David Wright hit another late inning, go- ahead homer against the Marlins, and the French and Italians do some weird-ass soccer shit at the World Cup Final.

I gotta admit, I got a little bit into the soccer. I even left a delightful little encampment with the family at the beach to go back inside to catch the Final. When I turned the game on, it was in the 23rd minute and the score was France 1, Italy 1, which meant I had missed more scoring than had occured in the rest of tournament, and, as it turned out, all the scoring that would happen that afternoon.

I was rooting for France, mostly because of their leader, Zenedine Zidane. After only a match and a-half, I had decided that this guy was one the one guy on the fields of Germany that I could root for. He was a man among boys, a hockey player among soccer players. He didn't flop like an extra in a John Wayne movie whenever some Portugese or Brazilian defender nudged him. He didn't roll around and howl as if he had stepped on a land mine any time an opposing player's foot hit his. He ran like a normal person, not a Looney Tunes character, and he clearly didn't spend a lot of time in front of mirror perfecting his bangs before the game.

A week ago I knew next to nil about Zidane or international soccer, but I learned, in the following order, that he was bald, somewhat menacing, amazingly good (even to my clueless eye) at keeping control of the ball and distributing it to his teammates (at times it looked like me dribbling our big supermarket bouncy ball around my 9 month old sons), and as clutch as David Wright, Derek Jeter, and Big Papi combined. If Magic Johnson and Mark Messier had a baby, it would be Zidane. France, under his undeniable leadership, had beaten the vaunted Brazil squad twice. Zidane scored twice in France's victory in 1998 and assisted the lone goal last Saturday in the quarterfinal. He took all the big penalty kicks and nailed them cold, and he did it with a poker-faced flair. On yesterday's kick for instance, he stutter-stepped, then chipped it high and soft, at quarter-speed, off the underside of the crossbar and just over the line. The Italian goalie could have caught it with one hand if he wasn't already flying away in the wrong direction. It was a balsy little trick shot on a big stage, kind of like dropping a suicide squeeze bunt in the late innings of Game 7 of the World Series.

I was fascinated by Zidane's demeanor: stoic, confident, yet aloof, as if everyone else on the field, including his teammates, annoyed him with their mortality. But then, after the semifinal win over Portugal, he did one of those weird soccer things that make the sport intriguing and repelling all at once. Rather than celebrate with his teammates, dancing and sliding like fraternity brothers at the last hour of Pig Roast, he got into a long, sweaty embrace with Figo, one of the Portugese stars. They whispered sweet nothings in one another's ears like summer camp lovers headed back to the backseats of their respective minivans, and, to my amazement, they took off their sweaty jerseys and exchanged them. Had Zidane just given Figo his varsity jacket?! I better call Becky. Then Zidane rejoined the endless celebration in front of the French fans, WEARING THE PORTUGESE PLAYER'S JERSEY!!! It was just so weird and degrading, yet noble...that acknowledgement of the emasculated opponent's worthiness, manhood defined in an entirely foreign body language. I tried to imagine Jeter dancing around Yankee Stadium in Varitek's Red Sox jersey in 2003. Bizarre behavior like this is what keeps me coming back to watch a little bit of soccer every four to eight years.

The game went on as they all do, building to occasional near-misses, a strip tease where the panties and pasties always stay put. France's initial penalty shot, it turned out, was on a bogus call, but as the game went on, France began to legitimately dominate. Of course, this didn't mean they could actually put the ball in the net. Zidane created many good opportunities for his strikers, and he scorched a header (it's the headwork that is truly amazing to us soccer inept Americans) that was barely, but beautifully blocked by the Italian goalie, Buffont.

The game, of course, went into OT, and, of course, a second OT, because even the best players in the world can't actually make a goal in soccer. But, it appeared, however, that France had the edge...they kept the ball in Italy's half of the field and kept getting good chances. Italy was basically just trying to stick their tired asses in the way of the French shots. Zidane went down at one point (I missed this, I was watching my Mets, who can finally be counted on to score more than soccer teams), but he was able to stay in the game. It was only a matter of time before Zidane struck, and, even if they didn't score, they would have him to set the tone for the penalty kicks. France was in good shape.

Then, it happened. In the 110th of 120 minutes, Zidane struck. That is, as he was jogging back upfield alongside his Italian defender, he turned to face the Italian, lowered his shoulders, and charged the Italian like a raging bull, spearing him in the solarplexus and toppling him to the ground.

We, the TV audience, didn't see this because it occured away from the ball, off camera. All we knew was that play had stopped because another Italian was flopping around like a fish out of water again, we waited for him to suddenly decide it was just a flesh wound and spring back up, then we saw the replay, and I think I speak for the entire world when I say we thought, "What the f--- just happened?" in our myriad languages.

A ref had seen the whole thing, and the fans in the stadium had seen the replay, so, legend or no legend, the French star was given a red card and sent off the field forever (he had announced his impending retirement before the tournament), with no replacement, and little chance of winning the old-fashioned way since it was now 10 against 11.

The French, without Zidane, did, in fact, lose, in penalty kicks (a cheesy way to end the "World's greatest tournament"...like ending an NCAA tournament game with a free-throw shooting contest.) This was not surprising. What was amazing was that this great player, in the greatest of games, in the most important of moments, his last game, his last moment, would throw everything away for cheap shot. Apparently...and Zidane has not yet spoken to the press as far as I know...any information I have I got from Wikipedia, which had been updated minutes after the incident...apparently the Italian, Marco Materazzi, made some sort of racial slur (Zidane is of Algerian descent, he grew up in a housing project in Marseilles), and that is what set Zidane off. (A day later now the rumor is that Materazzi called him a "dirty terrorist" and said something nasty about his family...this is according to my wife's Bible of websites, urbanbaby.com. Sportscenter also just reported hearsay that Materazzi was seen "twisting Zidane's nipples". )

But what a cheap shot! A forehead to the sternum! So gallantly brutal, primordial. Unimaginable even after it happened, like Tyson biting off a piece of Holyfield's ear. And in that instant, Zidane, who had been nearing legend status...a Jordan, a Pele, or even on a higher pedestal internationally if he could create the winning shot just one more time...became more like a Tyson, a great athlete brought low by his own fatal flaw of rage. Tyson and Zidane are ghetto, underneath all else, and it has occured to me that Zidane might be more comfortable as the object of everyone's scorn (and pity) than on a Wheaties box.

I know now that Zidane has a history of field rage: he had stomped and headbutted before in club and international play. He has accumulated more red cards than I have speeding tickets, which is no small feat. I also have read that the Italian players have a reputation for racism. (Their history of nipple twisting is well-documented and needs not be revisited here.)

Conventional wisdom is that Zidane embarrassed himself, let his country down, and degraded his sport. I find the conventional wisdom lacking a little in this case.

What remains for me is a mixed feeling of pained admiration for Zidane and outright disgust for the Italian and for drama-queen style soccer in general. Clearly Materazzi, whose team was limping around aimlessly, said or did something awful to try to draw the bull over a cliff. I think he even flopped on the head butt, making the blow look more severe than it was. Materazzi had a lot more gamesmanship than he had game at that point, which epitomizes what I saw of many of the soccer players/actors in the World Cup. His ploy worked perfectly, and he got the Italians the cup they clearly weren't going to get the honest way. Materazzi is a champion pussy in a sport that encourages pussiness. The Italian victory was dissapointing, at best, and his sport will continue to dissapoint until they start rewarding playmakers and banishing floppers. I wish that Zidane had been man enough to laugh off the provocation and go on to glory, but in the end, maybe it was more important for him to express how he felt about racist, flopping, pretty-boy nipple twisters ruining his sport. If that was the case, too bad he didn't hit Materazzi a little harder, and sent him into the hospital and off the field, like Zidane, forever.