Head Games Don’t Play Well With the Media
His balding head giveth, and eight years later, taketh away.
Zinedine Zidane was being primed for inclusion on Mt. Olympus, according to the laudatory coverage of the French soccer star in the run-up to Sunday’s World Cup final against Italy.
An angel, a poet, a renaissance man with modern-day vision ... you get the idea.
Then came the 110th minute and his head-butt into Marco Materazzi’s chest. The first reviews brought Zidane, who had scored twice in France’s World Cup final victory against Brazil in 1998, back down to earth after he was red-carded.
“It was a disgusting, nasty, blackly comic head-butt, delivered with a Hitchcockian suddenness, and it’s an unbelievable ending to Zidane’s lustrous career,” wrote the Guardian’s Rob Smyth. “It was a JFK moment ... rolled into one oh-my-God moment.”
Add World Cup: Maybe this French loss had something to do with new Wimbledon champion Amelie Mauresmo, a reverse curse of sorts.
In 1998, a Frenchwoman (Nathalie Tauziat) lost in the Wimbledon final, and France went on to defeat Brazil in the World Cup final. Hmm ...
Trivia time: How old was Cameroon’s Roger Milla when he played in the 1994 World Cup?
Idle thought: Next stop, Harry Potter?
Every sideline shot of France Coach Raymond Domenech during the World Cup had those at Briefing HQ noticing that he looks an awful lot like actor Alan Rickman.
It’s a good guess Rickman will be getting better reviews.
Watch fixing: There won’t be much time for Italians to celebrate the World Cup victory, because of the continuing investigation into allegations of match fixing in the country’s leading domestic league.
The former chief executive of Italian powerhouse Juventus, Antonio Giraudo, spoke about the soccer culture in his country during hearings.
“All kinds of things go on in football: people give Rolexes to referees, people fix the accounts,” he was quoted by Reuters. “What I’m saying is that this is an environment in which you have to protect yourself, in which you have to look after your own interests.”
Fast track: For summer reading, Runner’s World recommended “The Traveling Marathoner: A Complete Guide to Top U.S. Races and Sightseeing on the Run.”
Author Elise Allen raises the pertinent question: “I’ll go with friends and make a vacation of it -- a bizarre vacation in which the centerpiece is a 26.2-mile run. But when the race is over, what is the best way to take in a city when my knees won’t bend?”
Trivia answer: 42.
And finally: Portugal Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari spoke to reporters about his Germany counterpart, Juergen Klinsmann, after losing to Germany in the third-place game in the World Cup: “We’ve seen Klinsmann growing as a public figure in Germany. As a good friend and deep admirer, I was pleased. The victory was more important for him than for me.”
