World Cup Soccer: Beauty or the Beast?

The stage was set for a World Cup Final of Walt Disney proportions. The beautiful game of soccer's showcase event was within 10 minutes of ending and it looked increasingly as if the master of ceremonies--French maestro Zinedine Zidane--was about to conjure up a winning goal, thereby confirming his reputation as the world's best and classiest player. It had been 8 years since Zidane had lit up the world stage by helping France to win its first ever World Cup title. Between 1998 and 2006, however, he had suffered from a succession of injuries which clearly had prevented him from playing at his best. Now, here he was, clearly on top of his game once again, dancing around other players, making crisp and imaginative passes, even seemingly enjoying the on-field experience with a canny wink here and a sophisticated smirk there.

Zidane was playing beautiful soccer again and his team, France, looked set to earn their just rewards for outplaying a clearly fatigued Italian side that seemed short of energy and creativity. It felt like the perfect denouement for a Walt Disney movie: the prodigal son of French soccer (born to working-class immigrants from Algeria) had returned to his former glory and now had just one more hurdle to clear before claiming his rightful prize.

But then it all went terribly wrong. Instead of a Walt Disney movie, what unravelled in the next few minutes felt more like the fifth and final act of a Greek tragedy. Our hero's fatal flaw revealed itself in a moment of violent madness. Reacting to an apparent verbal taunt by the Italian defender, Marco Materazzi, Zidane approached his opponent and elegantly (if truth be told) head-butted him in the stomach. The video evidence was broadcast instaneosuly around the world to 1 billion bemused viewers. What? Who? How? Why? Did that really happen? How could that happen? Wasn't this supposed to be the beautiful game?

Most of us are still trying to find answers a week later. Was it Zidane's fault? Did he have a short fuse that had perhaps plagued him all his life? Was the pressure of the World Cup tournament--and the high expectations placed on his shoulders--too much for him? Or was Materazzi's comment so bad, so blatantly racist and sexist, that it deserved some kind of remonstration? Was Zidane fighting back against a culture of ugly verbal bantering that has possibly tainted the game of professional soccer?

Who knows, it might still be possible for Zidane to be the hero riding into the sunset at the end of the movie.