Zinadine Zidane
I don't really watch much football, except if it's the Worldcup or Euro Two Thousand Whatever. The only time I ever really got sucked into watching football with anything close to a sickness was Euro 2000. I don't really watch much football, except if itâs the Worldcup or Euro Two Thousand Whatever. The only time I ever really got sucked into watching football with anything close to a sickness was Euro 2000. The French won that year in a string of games that were completely spellbinding, largely thanks to one man: Zinadine Zidane. The first thing that is just incredibly cool about Zinadine Zidane is his name. Zinadine Zidane is just one of the greatest names of all time. Itâs in the same league as Nebuchadnezzar, Cleopatra, Steve McQueen and Cassius Clay. Zinadine Zidane. Just saying those two words immediately changes the chemistry in my brain. I feel instantly better when I say Zinadine Zidane. In that sense itâs like a spell, secret words from the Sultan's magician. Itâs also like a two word poem. I can imagine a Diwalhi singer in a grand mosque in some fairy tale land just singing the words Zinadine Zidane over and over while the multitude weep and faint. Am I getting carried away??? Maybe, but then when I watch the man actually perform, it seems to me like I might be short changing him.
The other thing I fucking love about ZZ is that heâs bald and proud of it. I say that because I donât have any hair on my head either and I feel comforted by the transcendent baldness of Zinadine Zidane. Then thereâs his intelligence. During his peak moments in Euro 2000 I donât think any human alive had a brain that was able to make the number of calculations and interpretations that his made. Itâs one thing to anticipate and react and initiate at enormous speed in the middle of an intensely complex situation, but to then be able to translate decisions to the tip of the foot with hairâs breadth precision is quite simply miraculous. It is divine, it is eternal, it is Shakespearean: man is an angel etc etc etc etcâ¦. (Hamlet)
The moment the clouds parted and Zidane walked onto the top of Mount Olympus was during the last World Cup in 2006. When some pathetic, limp-wristed, Dolce & Gabbana wearing Italian greaseball told Zidane he wanted to fuck his sister in the middle of extra time in a tied game. Zidane decided it was time to swap one very predictable and not so unique kind of glory for a kind of ultra-glory reserved for people like Alexander the Great and Muhammad Ali In front of 100,000 people in the stadium and a couple of billion people watching live on TV he executed the most beautiful, exquisite, poetic head but t ever executed by any man, anywhere, ever. There is no cinematic head butt that can touch it. It was a moment of glory. When he did that every single person instantly fell in love with him in a way that hadnât previously. I know I did.
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