Just Let Zidane Be

The Richard Cohen article, Camus and Zidane, comes closest to expressing what I feel about Zidane head butting Materazzi during the dying minutes of the 2006 World Cup Final.

The author draws a parallel between Meursault, the character in Albert Camus' The Stranger and Zidane:

In "The Stranger," the existentialist novel by Albert Camus [which, I must confess, I have not read, but have every intention of doing so now] an alienated French-Algerian man, Meursault, kills an Arab on the beach in the glare of the sunlight. It is a senseless act, as senseless as the way he fires one deadly shot, and then four more into the prone body.

Zinédine Zidane, a Frenchman born to Algerian parents in Marseille, did not kill anyone in the glare of the floodlights of Berlin's Olympic Stadium. His senseless act, beneath the gaze of a billion people, merely knocked an Italian off his feet. All that Zidane killed was a certain narrative of his life.

The part that is interesting to me is this:

Camus was averse to judgment. Acts themselves, explicable or not, were all that we could know existed. Meursault felt nothing at his mother's funeral and he killed the Arab in the stunning sunlight. We may wish that the story had been otherwise, as we may wish that love not be close to hate, but the story was what it was. Zidane, it seems, lost his head. Or perhaps he kept his head and chose to write a coda to his story that would have all the complexity of a great novel. Perhaps he sought an almost unseen act of anger that would prompt a global, virtual argument about the merits or demerits of a gesture without sense.

I do not know. Nor do I believe we will ever know. Whatever comes out will remain inconsequential beside the act itself, this violence in a 21st-century glare, this strange and stimulating ending.

Many words have been written online and in print, many words have been said on television programs dissecting Zidane's interaction with Materazzi, most of them questioning Zidane's wisdom in doing what he did ten minutes from the end of a glorious career in football.

Should he have done it? Should he not have shrugged it (whatever that insult was that Materazzi directed at Zidane) off? Insults are a part of the game, every game. The game was the final of the World Cup. France had gotten into the final after a rather shaky start. Zidane threw away a golden opportunity to win the cup for France by eliciting the red card and being shown the sidelines. If Zidane had been around for the shoot-out, France had a very good chance of winning. And on and on and on.

Quite frankly I don't understand what the fuss is all about. Zidane and Materazzi had a confrontation, Zidane reacted to the situation as he saw fit, he turned around and deposited his pate into Materazzi's gut. Subsequently, the referee presented Zidane with a red card (whether he should or shouldn't have is quite another matter) and off went Zidane.

End of story. It is what it is.

Zidane obviously reacted the way he did because he thought that that was the appropriate reaction. And for that, because the refree felt it was a foul, Zidane got the punishment he deserved as per the rules of the game. What Materazzi might have said and whether it merited the kind of reaction it got from Zidane are irrelevant. Zidane has gone on to say that he apologized to his teammates and his coach, but that he regretted nothing. Good for him.

As you peel the layers of the man's identity - footballer, Frenchman, sports icon, second-generation immigrant, team player - at the base of it all is a human being, with all of the attendant frailties. Let's expect a great game from a great footballer, but let's not expect the man to be anything more or less than a human being.