perfidy

Most folks, even those utterly disinterested in soccer, have seen the incessant replays of the head-butt that Zinedine Zidane laid on Marco Materazzi during the second overtime period of last week's World Cup final.

It's a story that won't die.

Aside from endless regurgitations (like this one) about the right and wrong of the matter, it's become an apparent staple that every smart-ass wants to get into an article, even those ostensibly unrelated to soccer, let alone sport. An example, from a July 12 Wall Street Journal about Nissan, Renault, and the potential for a partnership of some sort with General Motors, with a focus on whether it's too much to put on the plate of Carlos Ghosn, the much admired savior of Nissan:

Can he do that and run two other companies? This time at Renault, he has yet to work his magic. True, he has been there only for a year or so. But that is precisely why Renault shareholders want his attention focused on the French firm. They feel like their superstar has delivered a head butt to the chest.

That's not the sort of tiresome cuteness I normally associate with the WSJ. ...

But the excessive blather about the butt-head's head-butt itself has gotten tiresome. Zidane acquitted himself admirably, on most points, during his multiple televised descriptions of what happened, each of which was combined with an apology to the French people for his lapse.

The point that he's failed on (from another WSJ story of July 13) is encapsulated in this excerpt:

"These were words that touched the deepest part of me," said the 34-year-old Frenchman, seeking to explain why he had head-butted the Italian and got himself thrown out of the game, the last of his long and brilliant career. "I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that."

France ended up finishing the overtime with only 10 players, and then lost in the subsequent penalty shootout. Mr. Zidane is France's star penalty kicker and had scored from the penalty spot early in the match.

"I reacted badly, and I would like to apologize for it," added Mr. Zidane, who has occasionally erupted in the past. But he said he didn't regret the head butt. "The guilty one is the one who provokes," he said.

I mean no offense to Mr. Zidane, who seems to have truly deserved the Golden Ball as the best player in the World Cup. He's had an amazing career and served his country well. But jeez, what a thin-skinned pantywaist. He really needs to butch-up, I think.

If the "guilty one" truly was he who provoked, then Materazzi would have been thrown out, instead of Zidane. While the officiating at this World Cup was uniformly awful, the red card Zidane got was the only red card I saw in the entire tournament which was justified. And once it was clear that Zidane hadn't stopped Materazzi's heart from functioning, I hope Marco laughed his soccer-goon ass off. Because he played fair (within limits - grabbing clothes is bush-league, but so is all the melodramatic faked-injury acting that goes on in European soccer) and he did his job.

The reason Materazzi didn't punch him in the jaw is that, well, then Materazzi would have been the one trotting his ass off the pitch, not Zidane. Punching someone in the jaw is against the rules. Ghetto-talking that same someone is completely legitimate.

Zidane remains loved in France, which is as it should be. He should shut up about who's guilty, and so should all the lip readers and journalists who're trying to find some way to lionize Zidane and demonize Materazzi. Materazzi won that particular engagement, simply by drawing a red card for Zidane. But the worst offender would be this unnamed twit (from the same story):

A French lawyer announced yesterday that he will go to court to try to get the World Cup final invalidated on the grounds that Mr. Zidane's expulsion was illegal. He wants the match with Italy replayed.

Dream on, Pierre.

On a side note, the WSJ article points out that one of YouTube's most-viewed videos (500,000+ views) is that of Zidane laying the wood to Materazzi. Have a look, if you like, at another version (en Italiano) that seems to remove all doubt as to who the dumb-ass is, in this case, if not necessarily who the bad guy was.

But personally, I'd say that of the Zidane head-butt genre, this might be my favorite: