Zizou at Britannia!!!

July 4, 2009 at 3:59 am | Posted in General Football | Leave a comment

None other than the great Zinedine Zidane showed up at a soccer clinic at Britannia today, where my nephew plays Micro footie!  Zidane was a flawed genius  of footie.  He won everything including the World Cup and the European Championships for France, the European Champions League for Real Madrid, and countless other honours.

He left a bad taste in our mouths when he disgraced himself in his last game in the World Cup final 2006. His head butt of Marco Matterazzi in the final minutes of the game may well have been the decisive turning point which tipped the psychological balance and lost the match for France.  Zidane always played on the brink of getting sent off, and suffered from the red mist.   He got himself sent off in the 1998 World Cup finals by stamping on a Saudi player.

Nevertheless, he was the key player for France for 10 years, and carried them on his shoulders.  This is the mark of the truly great players.  France is now mediocre as a team.  It just demonstrates the importance of the genius player in world football, players like Pele and Maradona, who carry their teams to victory almost single handedly.   Such players only come along once in a generation.  When they retire, as they must eventually, they leave a hole in our hearts which can only be helped when another such player comes along.  There is a big hole in my heart for Zizou, and  so far there has been no player to fill it.