Non Lo So Che Una Terrorista

I thought that at the end of the glorious month-long Festival of the Round Ball, I’d well and truly be in withdrawal. Despite the absence of Les, Craig, Rale and Martin from our screens, thanks to one Zinedine Zidane and his rock-hard noggin, it doesn’t really feel as though the World Cup has actually ended.

Like many others in this hemisphere, I also woke up in the dead of night to watch the World Cup final on Monday morning. I have to admit that I was hoping for a French victory – after all, everyone knows that the Italian team is better at acting than football anyway. Perched on the couch in my pyjamas, I also watched the incident involving Zizou and Italy’s Marco Materazzi, with wide-eyed horror. The subsequent furore and speculation over what might have been said to provoke the mighty Zizou, have not yet abated. Sadly, there’s also been talk that his actions effectively cost France the game, and that he might still be stripped of his Player of the Tournament title.

Martin Tyler commented the other night that Zidane was a grown man who couldn’t take the law into his own hands on the field and that sledging in all sports is a fact of life. You could clearly see the disappointment on his face as he tried to assess the hoopla in his usual measured way. During the tournament, FIFA went to great pains to emphasise the anti-racism message of football, and in Victoria racial vilification has previously been a big issue in the AFL.

Most likely no one except Zidane and Materazzi will ever be certain of what was said in the seconds before Zidane’s outburst. I agree with Martin Tyler that sledging and abuse is rife in sport, but it shouldn’t be tolerated either. If the referee had been in earshot of the reported comments, Materazzi would have scored himself a yellow card (or worse?). Since this didn’t happen, all the referee could do was react to the result of the comment – far worse than any yellow card. Everyone’s arguing about whether Zidane should have been sent off and whether it was appropriate to use video footage to send him off. Yes, he did deserve the red card and should have resisted the (very natural) urge to retaliate. Yet I guess he did also show that even lauded sportspeople are only human, and are fallible. What about Materazzi?? The player whose careless remarks – whether racially based or not – have led to the expulsion and disgrace of one of the most skilful and graceful players ever to take to the field. You’d think that everyone would be jumping all over him to find out in detail exactly what he said to spark such a violent reaction. Yet he has refused to divulge exactly what he said and I wonder why, if it was apparently so innocuous. If FIFA really wants to crack down on unsporting behaviour, let alone racism, Materazzi should also have been red-carded or sanctioned in some way.

I think the best summation of the incident was made by someone called ‘hwill’, via The Age Online blog: I heard the insult and he deserved to be headbutted. Translated from Italian it goes like this, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”.

I just hope that Zizou is remembered for all the fantastic football he played, and not for how he spent his last minutes on the field. Vive la France!!