[wordup] The Head Butt

[Adam Shand]

Via: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight...>

I don't know if you saw or heard about the final of the Soccer World  
Cup and the French captain Zenedine Zidane who in the last seconds of  
the game head-butted one of Italian players and was sent off. It was  
an odd thing, to say the least. Why did this great athlete resort to  
that, and why a head-butt in the chest - not to the other's head?

Here are some thoughts from Nettime. I want to believe this and I  
think it probably comes close to the truth.

Translated Source: http://www.ranadasgupta.com/notes.asp?note_id=69
Original Source: http://www.congopage.com/article.php3?id_article=3791

Commentary on Zidane's gesture by Dany Laferrière
Thursday, July 13, 2006 10:40 GMT

“If there were any doubts about the fact that Zidane was one of the  
best players in the history of football, after the final there can be  
no more!”

> Dany Laferrière is a francophone novelist from Haiti now living  
> between Montreal and Miami. His commentary on the Zidane "header" -  
> the head-butt attack on Italian player Marco Materazzi in the World  
> Cup final - which I found on the blog of Alain Mabanckou, a great  
> Congolese novelist, is fantastic, so here is a rough, and slightly  
> edited, translation.
I didn't sleep much last night, trying to understand Zidane’s action,  
especially since all the opinions I heard resembled each other so  
much it was as if only one person had watched the match. The more  
there are of us, the more we seem to have the same opinion. I am  
always suspicious of a crowd that speaks with one voice. And it  
seemed that everyone was feeling sorry for Zidane: an unworthy end to  
the career of a great champion. It’s strange, but this version seemed  
just too bourgeois to me. In fact people weren’t really sorry for  
Zidane: they were only sorry for themselves. Zidane was just a  
character from the fairy story they told themselves each night before  
going to bed. Hardly a month ago, Zidane was only an old, tired  
player. Now he’s a fallen knight.

In the old, bloody fables of the Brothers Grimm, it was acceptable to  
have a red card ending. But today, in this strange epoch when  
everyone seems to have drunk Disney milk in their infancy, no one  
tolerates anything but rosy endings. Everything must finish happily.  
Our heroes must be loveable so that we can file them away in the  
cupboard of our happy memories. So where does that leave Zidane? The  
exemplary father, the man of discretion, the sportsman with a  
faultless career? Such are the epithets people have pinned to him.

Maybe it’s true, but what gets lost? What bitterness did he have to  
swallow before that fateful moment? What did he have to endure  
silently before deciding to seize control of his life again? Before  
becoming once again the proud young boy who played in the streets of  
Marseille? The one you could never insult with impunity about his  
mother or his race?

Marseille is not a joke. The National Front is not far away. And  
Zidane is a child of that epoch. He has always known there would come  
a moment when he would find himself looking into the eyes of a man he  
abandoned long ago for money and fame - and that man is himself. I  
don’t believe that the Italian player said to him anything that he  
couldn't stand to hear. He simply felt that this was the moment. His  
last match, the finale of the World Cup, at the very end. It was now  
or never. Otherwise, he had sold himself for good.

Don’t speak to him of lost dignity. This gesture was precisely about  
dignity, and he made it to recover some of his honour. He had already  
given everything to his team. Now it was for himself. Eight seconds  
out of a career of nearly twenty years. Because if he didn’t do it  
then, it would all be over. Anyway, he was exhausted, and the team  
could do without him.

I think that there are some moments in life which belong only to  
those who live them, and to no-one else. The moment when one refuses  
to play always appears stupid in the eyes of others. But what value  
has the pride of the collectivity when compared to the intimate pride  
of the individual? Just because there are many people watching a  
game, they all believe that it’s only a game. Zidane’s act was the  
intrusion of weighty reality into the game. Zidane is not playing  
anymore. He breaks the codes with a blow of his head.

I remember the moment of Charlebois’s death-blow, when he threw his  
drums at the French public. In France, everyone was astonished by  
such behaviour, and yet in Quebec, Charlebois instantly became a  
counter-cultural icon. They sensed something liberating in his  
gesture. For Zidane, it will be the same thing. Young rappers will  
surely introduce into their video clips the eight seconds where  
Zidane left the game to re-enter their stifling reality. For once,  
Zidane, who was legendary for never allowing his temperature to rise,  
embraced all those who do not know how to behave in public. His  
brothers from the street whose blood is still boiling.

Comment by "Sami"

“If there were any doubts about the fact that Zidane was one of the  
best players in the history of football, after the final there can be  
no more!” wrote the popular Russian daily, Komsomolskaia Pravda,  
before adding, “Only an epic hero, a titan, a Hercules could depart  
like that.” Dany Laferrière’s very personal commentary echoes that of  
many journalists around the world. Nine seconds which make an  
absolute human out of a being whose shoulders would have been crushed  
by the image of a god hung on him. The beauty of that gesture and its  
deep meaning are worth more than a gold trophy. For me, this entire  
World Cup could have been organized only so that we could see this  
astonishing culmination: this header that sought not the goal but a  
chest from which poisonous words flowed. For that alone, Zidane  
deserves the immortality that had already been predicted for him. As  
for the disappointment of others, they can do with it whatever they  
wish. They are truly some moments when others come after yourself,  
for they are not the essential. Especially when you understand their  
talent for condemning their instrumentalised heroes to absolute  
solitude.
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