Sock-cer

It was a sad night for soccer. Not because Italy beat sentimental favourites France to the World Cup but because of how the French – and Zidane – lost. But as the IHT’s Roger Cohen blogs:

Genius has a dark side. How else to reconcile the divine smile on Zinedine Zidane’s face throughout the French victory he orchestrated over Brazil with the man, fist-clenched, possessed, driving his head into Marco Materazzi’s chest in the 110th minute of the World Cup final and so concluding his career in shame?

Life is no fairy tale. Zidane was to lift the trophy and come full circle eight years after the French triumph in Paris, when he scored two goals in the final. That was the script. Instead, Italy won and Zidane came full circle to another moment in the 1998 tournament: the one in which he snapped, stamped on a Saudi Arabian player's chest, and was sent off.

Rage resided in Zidane, somewhere deep in the soul of a humble man who had a gift, who could see what others could not, who caressed the ball and who took games and the people who watched them to unsuspected and lovely places. Rage cannot undo or lessen his gift. We must accept the two together as, in the end, we must accept all the contradictions of life. Only in fairy tales does everything come out right.

Do not belabour this moment of madness. Of course, we want to know what the provocation might have been. Our curiosity demands that we discover what Materazzi may have said to spur such ugliness. But let us respect Zidane’s silence. We know that he is suffering. We may begin to imagine what it was like for him to walk off the field, past the trophy he coveted, head bowed, to a silent pain. He must live with the terrible ambiguity he showed the world in this tournament…

Italy scarcely deserved the victory on the night. It hung on and seized its chance. But over the course of the tournament it had earned the title. Its football was the smoothest and most cohesive, and its defense was made of iron. If you do not see beauty in defence, you cannot understand the essence of the Italian game.

Italians are sentimental about many things. But football to them is more serious than that. They carry the game in their blood as no other nation except Brazil. Four titles now demonstrate that. By comparison, the English and the French are parvenus when it comes to this sport.