If you thought soccer was a gentleman’s game, you must have confused it with cricket.
Americans came away from the World Cup certain that our lads, disappointingly overmatched, still had a lot to learn from Europe. But this ugly spat suggests that Europe could learn a little something from us about trash talking—at least how to deal with it. I guess these soccer greats have never heard a master bench jockey work over a player from a baseball dugout. Nor some of the chatter between NFL defensive backs and receivers. And certainly not the banter that passes between NBA stars on the dribble. (A “best of” Michael Jordan and Larry Bird sampling would provide the equivalent of a Ph.D. course in trash talk.)
The truth is, “yo’ mama” has always been the fundamental building block of competitive trash talk. It is most often used in a fashion that is exceedingly vulgar and unquestionably offensive. That being said, as far as I know, until now nobody has ever used it as an excuse for getting kicked out of any championship game let alone when captaining one’s national team in the biggest championship in the world. Zinedine Zidane, who made his first public comments on the matter Wednesday night , didn’t exactly clear up the mystery when he told French TV: “I would rather have taken a punch in the jaw than have heard that.” The Daily Mirror of London quotes Zidane’s mother praising him for defending the family’s honor; according to the tabloid, she said of Materazzi, “I want his balls on a platter.” Leave it to a mother to see it all as nobility.
Whatever “that” may have been, it certainly would have been better for Zidane to have taken one to the jaw, even a knockout blow, than for him to have head-butted Marco Materazzi. We can all play “what if” forever and never know what really would have happened had Zizou not been tossed from the game. What we do know is that France was controlling the action and continued to have good opportunities to score, the best coming minutes before the ejection when Zidane’s header was stabbed away by the leaping Italian keeper Gianluigi Buffon. Zidane’s expulsion put France a man down for the final 10 minutes, ending its hopes of a tie-breaking score before the penalty shootout phase.
Keen observers might have noted that Italy didn’t miss a single penalty kick, which has led some to suggest that Zidane’s presence in the shootout wouldn’t have made any difference. Perhaps not, as the French player who did miss, David Trezeguet, would certainly have been included among the designated five shooters regardless. But there is a weird psychology to these shootouts and the longer a team doesn’t miss the more the pressure ratchets up. Zidane, no doubt, would have been first up for France and, in all likelihood, scored. Who knows what might have ensued? By introducing a variable, a most powerful one, the math may have worked out differently.
It’s true that Materazzi has a reputation as one of the more thuggish defenders in Italy’s Serie A. Still, his pushing, pulling, tugging, taunting treatment of Zidane was hardly an unprecedented tactic for controlling the great French midfielder or any of the other game’s top talents. It’s also true that Zidane has a bit of the nasty in him; he was red-carded—one of 14 times in his career—and then suspended for two games in the ‘98 World Cup for a studs-first stomp on a Saudi player.
All the lip-readers in the world, most of whom have found employment with media since the incident , have not been able to agree on exactly what Materazzi said. It should be noted, however, that Zidane, who is of Algerian descent, made no suggestion in his TV interview, as some of his proxies had earlier, that Materazzi had defamed Arabs or Islam. (Even if that had been true, distasteful and indefensible as it might be, I might suggest that European stars read a biography of Jackie Robinson for a little perspective on verbal abuse.) A Paris-based antiracism group, SOS Racisme, was quick to demand sanctions against the Italian player. But, coming after a year in which Arab youths have been rioting on the outskirts of Paris to protest their treatment, sidelining Materazzi doesn’t seem like a meaningful solution to any of France’s deeper problems.
Zidane, who has been defended by French President Jacques Chirac, as well as the majority of the country’s soccer fans, doesn’t seem to grasp any larger point. Though he apologized “to all the children” for his act, he apologized only to the children and insisted that he doesn’t regret what happened. He even suggested that it must have been ordained from on high. “I tell myself that if things happened that way, it’s because somewhere up there it was decided that way.” Personally, I don’t think God was watching the World Cup. And my very mortal judgment is that a vicious cheap shot does nothing to defend the honor of any race, any religion or any loved ones. A star of Zidane’s enormous stature and wealth has plenty of resources to defend all three if that is his heartfelt concern.
Materazzi clearly got the best of Zidane on the field. And now he’s seriously outplaying him off the field, as well. As Zidane was speaking his pious piece on national television, the Italian sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport posted an interview with Marterazzi on its Web site. He swore he would never say anything about somebody’s mother, revealing how his own mother died when he was 15 “and even now I get emotional talking about her.” He didn’t know Zidane’s mother had been ill and sent her “my best wishes” (which isn’t quite what she was hoping for from him). Finally, he had nothing but praise for his legendary rival, who was at his peak when he played in Italy between 1996 and 2001. Materazzi, who is almost the same age as Zidane, but never of remotely the same stature, said, “He’s always been my hero.”
Maybe America could teach Zidane and his apologists something about the meaning of heroism, too. On Tuesday, at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, there was a ceremony honoring Roberto Clemente, the late Pittsburgh Pirates legend. Clemente, who was Puerto Rican, endured more than his share of abuse and disrespect as the first Hispanic superstar in the game. He is a Hall of Famer—a career .317 hitter, a 12-time all-star, a National League MVP, a World Series MVP and a winner of 12 consecutive Golden Glove awards. None of that, however, was what made him a hero. What did was his passionate efforts on behalf of his homeland and other struggling Latin American countries. He died, in 1972 at age 37, in a New Year’s Eve plane crash when he was shepherding relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Playing the All-Star Blues Again
Even with increased American interest in the World Cup, I had expected to be finished with it by now. So I was planning to write about baseball’s all-star game, a handy perennial where I mock Bud Selig for his deeply flawed vision. His scheme to make the game count by presenting the winning league with home-field advantage in the World Series—a clear benefit—while maintaining it as a popularity contest is preposterous. But a funny thing happened on the way to writing that column; the game was so good, the players’ effort so apparent, the ending so dramatic that I feel compelled to cut the commissioner some slack.
However, with the American League’s come-from-behind victory goes the National League’s last best chance of winning the World Series this year. Whichever NL squad reaches the series will face a clearly superior AL foe. The only hope was to get a jump-start at home, facing an opponent disadvantaged by the loss of the designated hitter. If you don’t think that’s a critical loss, take a gander at the last two World Series champs. The Chicago White Sox would have to bench one of two slugging first basemen, Paul Konerko (.313, 21 home runs, 67 RBIs) or Jim Thome (.298, 30, 77). To make room for David Ortiz in the lineup, the Boston Red Sox would have to sit either Kevin Youkilis, a leadoff hitter with a .407 on-base percentage, or Mike Lowell, a Golden Glove third basemen and clutch hitter (.307, 11, 46).
Now the hopes of Mets, Cardinals and other NL fans have taken a grievous blow. These folks have no reason to be as gracious as I’ve been. They can certainly blame Selig for what has become an annual predicament.
