The Hindu : Sport : Zidane's final `header' booted out

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Wednesday, Jan 10, 2007
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Zidane's final `header' booted out

LONDON: Maybe Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the World Cup final never happened after all.

The unforgettable moment in football's biggest match came when the France captain, in his final game before retiring, reacted to something Marco Materazzi said by planting his head firmly into the Italian's chest.

Because the ball was further down the field, few among the 69,000 fans in Berlin's Olympic Stadium saw the incident and were amazed when Zidane was sent off.

FIFA, it seems, didn't see it at all. There's certainly no mention of the incident in its official World Cup 2006 technical report.

Even the outline of the final makes no mention of it. It's not even noted that Zidane was ejected — in the final match of his career!

Even in retirement, Zidane was suspended for three games and fined for the outburst. Before he considers suing FIFA, there may be reasons why the governing body didn't include details of the incident in its report.

Zidane's ejection for an act of blatant violence provided a shameful end to a championship that FIFA had lauded as one of the best ever. Maybe it didn't want it to take the shine of an otherwise glowing report.

Final stages

The final stages of the last game was 110 minutes old, deep into extra-time, with the game labouring toward a penalty shootout when the Zidane-Materazzi flare-up happened and the Frenchman was shown a red card.

As the three-time FIFA Player of the Year walked past the World Cup trophy, the smiles of satisfaction disappeared from the faces of Sepp Blatter and his FIFA colleagues.

They knew that the 2006 World Cup — which has the letters ``FIFA'' at the head of its official title — would forever be known as the competition where one of the greatest players the game has ever seen ended his career by head-butting an opponent.

No reference

When the official report came out six months later, Blatter, UEFA president Lennart Johansson and local organising committee chairman Frank Beckenbauer all wrote forewords to the document without making reference to Zidane's head-butt or even his ejection.

While rightly praising the organisational skills of the Germans, the report skipped over some glaring errors by some of the referees. To its credit, the report criticised players and coaches for the increasing practice of feigning injuries as a tactical ploy. The report simply ignored the tournament's single biggest moment. Though the report makes brief mention of Zidane's contributions right up to the 104th minute of the final, when Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon saved his header, the final header of his career got missed! — AP

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