Italy v France on Day 11 of Euro 2008?
Ribery & Gallas & Buffon & Del Piero?
Do we care about those two old teams any more?
Does the arch-conservative Raymond Domenech know what he’s doing?
On Tuesday I was thinking about the 2006 World Cup Final and trying to remember what had happened.Also tried to recall what I’d written at the time.
From our ANR database I can see that on June 14 I’d written Colossal pressure turned Zidane into a UXB
And on June 10, I’d written Zidane 1 Materazzi 2 : skullduggery as Italy win their fourth World Cup
Google would not take me to my skullduggery piece. However, Google took me to a Guardian blog where that piece was quoted by Gombrowicz on July 11, 2006 :
The following comes from Myles Palmer’s review of the World Cup final on arsenalnewsreview.co.uk.
I think everything is spot on – But I don’t think he needed to call Materazzi an ‘Italian brute’ – just a ‘brute’ could be enough.
” Then in extra-time we saw, in replays, the Zidane-Materazzi clash in the 109th minute. On one viewing, the incident was bizarre because we saw Materazzi grope Zidane’s nipple, we saw a smiling Zidane walk past him, and we saw the Italian say something, and then Zidane turned and put his bodyweight into a headbutt that surprised the six foot four defender when it hit him in the chest and knocked him down.
The assault was a graceful and authoritative movement, typical of Zidane, who positioned his feet perfectly to allow a blow of maximum force. It was like no headbutt we have ever seen before. Violent conduct is rarely as precise as this. The more you watch it, the more you realise that Zidane had decided what he was going to do before he walked past Materazzi and turned round and allowed the Italian brute to approach him.
By losing it, by succumbing to the red mist, by reacting to an alleged racist slur, (“You are the son of a terrorist whore,”) France’s captain earned the 14th red card of his career. Maybe Zizou, who had carried a shoulder injury since the 80th minute, just came to the end of himself, the end of his temper, the end of his energy, the end of his interest in playing the game, the end of a tournament too far, the end of a season of misery at Real Madrid, and now, after seeing Vieira go off, Ribery go off, Henry go off, he wanted to go off himself. He made a statement : I’m out of here !
Unfortunately, Zidane is bigger than France, bigger than Domenech. He is only 40% of the player he was in 1998 and he never showed for a throw-in. He should not have played for more than an hour but the coach who had begged him to come back was not strong enough to take Zizou off when his shoulder was injured. He was, in more senses than one, irreplaceable.”
Ah, yes : It’s all coming back to me now.
Domenech had to ask Zidane to come back from his international retirement. And my view was : If Thierry Henry was as good as people thought he was, France’s manager would not have had to ask Zidane to come back. Especially as Henry complained privately that he’d never scored from a Zidane pass in all the years they had played together.