fettuccine alfredo

what can we learn from the infamous Zidane "headbutt"

What happens when a sports superstar decides to make a bad move during a match? Most of the time, the outcome of a negative behavior would spark furious comments from thousands that have been watching from the stands and possibly millions more from home. Many incidents like this would normally be ended with public apology by the sullen athletes and most probably they would be punished by the games federation. Throughout the last century cases of professional athletes showing their rage during game has been increasing. For example footballer Francesco Totti has spat Christian Paulsen in the face, in America Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth had stomped on another player's head, the famous Eric Cantona had ‘karate kicked’ his fan in 1995. Recently the world was shocked once again when star French Midfielder Zinedine Zidane was sent off for ‘headbutting’ Italian, Marco Materazzi in the chest in an off the ball incident during the 110th minute of the 2006 World Cup final match in Germany.
Zidane had announced before that he would retire from professional football after the 2006 World Cup and this event led him to receive the red card from the referee. It was an awful way to end his successful career. The chronology of the incident is believed to be when initially the two players exchanged words before Zidane began to walk away from him. Next Materazzi then said something to Zidane, who turned around, made a run-up and head-butted Materazzi in the chest, sending him to the ground. Later during the FIFA investigations, video footage suggested that Materazzi had provoked Zidane and newspapers had lip readers try to determine what Materazzi had said, coming up with a variety of insults. Zidane admitted to the press that Materazzi has repeatedly said harsh comments about his mother and sister. Materazzi admitted insulting Zidane, but said that Zidane's behavior had been very arrogant. He stressed that the insults had been trivial and denied that he insulted Zidane’s mother. Lip readers were hired to suggest what might have been said by both parties. Materazzi's alleged dialogue before the incident translated from the Italian language was most probably “hold on, wait, that one's not for a nigger like you. We all know you are the son of a terrorist whore. So just f*** off.” But at the end of the day no professional lip readers could prove the accuracy of what actually has been said by both parties. Both of them has been later fined and suspended by world governing body Fifa.
I believe that people deserve second chances, even these professional athletes too, but as we see, they are also human like us and they tend to make mistakes in live and learn by regretting their mistakes. A lot of other concerns would arise, primarily is the affect this type of behavior has on those impressionable young minds watching from the stands and at home as well. The negative impact would be a huge damage to kids around the world who has been a number one fan for that particular sports superstar.
Many different views arose since Zidane’s heatbutting incident happened. Many variety of reviews were made by people worldwide saying that his attitude was a shame and it has tarnished his awesome football career throughout his years. Oppositely some said that his behavior has been making him more as a real HERO. If someone insulted a person’s race or religion, he'd be as ready to attack that person, no matter what the circumstances. Zidane's action in a way has highlighted for the world the fact that the racial unity of France is more important than winning the World Cup title itself. Some suggested that rules should never be broken especially during a very important match like World Cup and that bad behavior in matches should mean stiffer penalties. It’s been clear that Zidane was provoked into behaving badly as any sane man would not have done something drastic as this during his last final match of his career. Despite the incident in the last ten minutes of the match, Zidane, a Muslim of Algerian parentage and proclaimed in France as an inspiration of multiculturalism, was voted the tournament's best player and received full support from the President of France, Jacques Chirac, Abdelaziz Boutelfika the President of Algeria and his ever loyal fans especially those of from France itself.

This incident has opened the eyes of people on the reality of what is happening in Europe itself nowadays. What we could observe between French and Italian team during the World Cup 2006 is that the French since World Cup 1998 had a line up of multi-cultural players and were even called the Black, Blanc, Beur which means black, white and Arab. However the Italian team line up comprised only pure Italians. Racial identity crisis is now becoming widespread in European countries such as France, Spain and Italy. Multiculturalism is not fully accepted by all citizens in these European countries. People still prefer on having their originals citizens to reside in these countries and don’t give a good treatment to some immigrants mainly from Africa and Arabic countries that live in their country. Terrorism that has tarnished the good name of the Arabic race has given some hard time to other innocent immigrants in European countries as condemnation to them slowly kills their self-esteem. The Europe’s identity crisis is something that should not be neglected, it should be inspected in 360 degrees and preventive and corrective measures are to be taken before this situation goes out of control. Conflict or the superiority of races should be abolished and Europeans and the societies in the world should look optimistically at the mass advantages of cross – cultural integration such as spoken language variability, improvement of economic conditions, increase in tourists, fusion of foods, better understanding of cultures and identities and transparency that breaks cultural barriers between different nations.

While the world is adapting and turning into globalization and cross-cultural integration, all the races should unite and try their best in understanding different cultures. Football on the other hand is a game played by humans and not robots, therefore, the game should be played professionally but like all other humans, footballer's makes mistakes too and they deserve to be forgiven when they do wrong.

posted by eye-catcher @ 3:08 AM