AJC.com > Sports > Soccer blog > Archives > 2006 > July > 09
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Berlin bizarre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Many of the pictures in newspapers and websites across the world tomorrow will feature the jubilant Italians winning their fourth World Cup.
And while the Azzurri richly deserve it after a magnificent tournament, the image that figures to be most indelible, most impossible to ignore, of this entire month in Germany will be the red card issued to France’s Zinedine Zidane in extra time. His inexplicable head butt of Italy’s Marco Materazzi with just 10 minutes left will be long remembered and written about, and as the details of what triggered his bizarre outburst are discovered.
That’s the only word for how the usually graceful and classy Zidane left the soccer stage. Bizarre. Truly, truly bizarre. It was a Wayne Rooney and a Charles Barkley at the same time. He got Materazzi, and he got him good, square in the chest.
What a tragedy. A tragically disappointing and sad moment. In the World Cup final.
In the dozen or so years I’ve avidly watched, followed and written about this sport, I continue to be amazed why what happens on the pitch, as well as off. There is never an end to the bizarre — there’s that word again — machinations and actions that underpin the game.
Take Italy, with all the swirl of ugly drama at home due to match-fixing scandal involving some of the biggest club teams in the game. And yet the Azzurri shrugged off what could have been an understandable distraction. Even after one of their former teammates, Gianluigi Pessotto, remains gravely injured after an apparent suicide attempt in connection with the scandal, Marcelo Lippi’s ragazzi didn’t lose their focus and instead became more resilient.
No, even while watching the happy Italians kiss the trophy before it was presented, it was hard not to think of Zidane, sitting in a locker room, a solitary, disgraced figure. It’s as bizarre and stunning as anything in a World Cup final in many, many years.
Also bizarre was David Trezeguet, the hero for France against Italy in the Euro 2000 finals, cracking the woodwork in penalty kicks, proving the final margin of victory.
With this post, Off the Ball signs off of the World Cup, sad not only that it’s ended but because of the way it ended. Unforgettable. And for all the wrong reasons.
Those thoughts of the great Zizou walking off, and past the Jules Rimet Trophy and into the tunnel after seeing red, will be on her mind as she goes through withdrawal. After she checks herself into post-World Cup rehab, with soccertine patches on her arms, and tries to convince herself that the constant scratching and spitting in baseball isn’t really all that boring after all.
And how’s this for the ultimate bizarre thought of this World Cup? The only points Italy dropped, other than the final, which officially goes down as a tie, were to — ahem — the United States.
It was a funny old World Cup, wasn’t it?
OTB will be back in about a week’s time, or whenever the folks wearing the white lab coats at the withdrawal clinic deem her fit to return to society.
Until then, ciao, everybody.
