World Cup Mystery:
What Did 'Animal'
Say to Anger 'God'?
Even Lip Readers Don't Agree
On Spark for Head Butt;
Affront to Motherhood?
By ANDREW HIGGINS and MARIE VALLA
July 13, 2006 5:38 a.m.; Page A1
PARIS -- The World Cup is over and Italy won. But the most gripping global sporting drama of the moment rumbled on in Paris last night:
A Frenchman known to his fans as "God" went on television to explain why he rammed his shaved head into the chest of an Italian nicknamed "the animal."
Watched by spellbound fans across France and then flashed around the world, the television appearance of Zinédine Zidane was the latest episode in a fiercely fought international competition: trying to figure out why France's star soccer player blew his top during Sunday's World Cup final.
[ZIDANE]
Zinedine Zidane head-butts Marco Materazzi during Sunday's World Cup final.
The contest has featured lip readers, sociologists, philosophers and novelists -- and millions of anguished soccer fans eager to know why one of the game's greatest and most graceful players went wild and, in the process, hurt France's chance of winning its second World Cup in eight years.
Mr. Zidane, appearing on France's Canal Plus pay-TV, said his quarrel with Italian defender Marco Materazzi began when the Italian tugged his shirt 10 minutes from the end of the 30-minute overtime. Mr. Materazzi, according to Mr. Zidane, then insulted his mother and sister.
"These were words that touched the deepest part of me," said the 34-year-old Frenchman, seeking to explain why he had head-butted the Italian and got himself thrown out of the game, the last of his long and brilliant career. "I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that."
France ended up finishing the overtime with only 10 players, and then lost in the subsequent penalty shootout. Mr. Zidane is France's star penalty kicker and had scored from the penalty spot early in the match.
"I reacted badly, and I would like to apologize for it," added Mr. Zidane, who has occasionally erupted in the past. But he said he didn't regret the head butt. "The guilty one is the one who provokes," he said.
Mr. Zidane's explanation is unlikely to quiet a frenzy of speculation that France's l'Equipe newspaper yesterday called "L'Enquête Planétaire," or "The Planetary Inquest." Parisian café goers watching the interview on TV last night groaned at Mr. Zidane's lack of specifics. He later also spoke to French channel TF1.
What exactly happened on the field of Berlin's Olympic Stadium Sunday has become a global obsession. Outside Italy, where fans have savored their triumph, Mr. Zidane's now world-famous head butt has attracted more media attention than Italy's success. Even Italian papers have put it on the front page.
Lip Readers Get the Call
Eager to work out what prompted Mr. Zidane's fury, media from Britain to Brazil have turned to lip readers to scrutinize video footage of the game and decipher what was said by Mr. Materazzi, a notoriously aggressive defender. The lip readers all agreed that insults were traded but have given very different versions of what was said.
[slideshow promo Italy]1
The Times of London's lip reader said the Italian called Mr. Zidane, whose parents came to France from North Africa, a "son of a terrorist whore." According to the BBC's expert, Mr. Materazzi said, "I hope your family all die ugly deaths." Experts enlisted by a Brazilian TV show said the Italian called Mr. Zidane's sister a prostitute. The men are believed to have spoken in Italian, which Mr. Zidane speaks because he played in Italy for many years.
Mr. Materazzi, in various media interviews, has denied calling the Frenchman a "terrorist" or insulting his mother, saying "the mother is sacred."
"I didn't say anything to him about racism, religion or politics," Mr. Materazzi told Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport in an interview, excerpts of which were released last night shortly before Mr. Zidane's TV appearance. "I didn't talk about his mother, either. I lost my mother when I was 15 and even now I still get emotional talking about her."
Mr. Materazzi added that the French soccer star "has always been my hero. I admire him a lot."
It isn't the first time Mr. Zidane has lost his cool. In 1998, he stamped on a Saudi player during a World Cup game and was ordered off the field by the referee. France eventually won the tournament. Two years later, he head-butted a German player and was again expelled.
Though widely condemned for unsportsmanlike conduct after Sunday's head butt, Mr. Zidane has, if anything, become an even bigger star than before. Instead of slipping into retirement, the intensely private player has remained in the spotlight. Mr. Zidane was awarded the Golden Ball for best player at the World Cup -- an award given by journalists covering the event.
An announcement yesterday by Canal Plus that Mr. Zidane would be speaking in the evening was treated as a major piece of breaking news. His comments were the top item on France's evening news broadcasts.
To try to capitalize on this, a French record label has released a reggae-style song titled "Coup de Boule," French slang for head butt. Its chorus: "Zidane has hit [him]." The song plays on the words of a pre-World Cup song with the chorus "Zidane has scored."
On YouTube, the Web site used by people to share videos, the two most watched offerings in past days feature Mr. Zidane's head butt. They've been seen nearly half a million times. Another popular video is a compilation of fouls by the head-butted Italian, Mr. Materazzi.
While most French fans say Mr. Zidane's action probably lost France the game, nearly two-thirds say they've forgiven him, according to an opinion poll in Le Parisien newspaper. President Jacques Chirac, at a meeting with the team Monday at the Elysée Palace, embraced Mr. Zidane and told him: "You are a virtuoso....You are also a man of heart, commitment and conviction. That's why France admires and loves you."
Court Action
A member of parliament for France's ruling party has demanded that Mr. Zidane be given a Legion d'honneur, France's highest decoration. A French lawyer announced yesterday that he will go to court to try to get the World Cup final invalidated on the grounds that Mr. Zidane's expulsion was illegal. He wants the match with Italy replayed.
Corporate sponsors have reveled in the frenzy of interest in a man who graces advertisements for telephones, insurance policies, dairy goods and other products.
French telecom brand Orange, which renewed its contract with Mr. Zidane before the World Cup, said yesterday that the company regretted the head butt, "but it's not up to us to judge or condemn it. He's proven many times before that he was a straight and moral human being." Since Sunday's final, the company has run full-page newspaper ads featuring a close-up of Mr. Zidane, smiling on a soccer field.
Adidas AG, a sponsor of the World Cup and of Mr. Zidane, is launching a new website to allow fans to leave written or video messages for the "one who made us dream so much." The site, mercizidane.fr, starts up on Saturday. A temporary site has a picture of Mr. Zidane with the message: "Thank You for all the happiness you have given us."
Writers and philosophers have read great moral drama into Mr. Zidane's tantrum. "The God of football has become a literary hero," declared Zoé Valdes, an exiled Cuban writer in an article published in Spain. Bernard Henri-Lévy, a French philosopher writing in this newspaper, termed it the suicide of a "planetary icon."
Others see simpler lessons. "What a fabulous head butt," said Al Breach, head of research at UBS in Moscow and devoted fan of the French national team. "The Italian deserved something -- a bad dude -- and so, a good oak loses his cool and socks him one. Wonderful!"
-- Gabriel Kahn in Rome, Leila Abboud in Paris and Amir Efrati in New York contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Higgins at
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