Plain Talk from Skratchy

With France and Italy level in extra time of Sunday's World Cup final, Zinedine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi in the chest and was sent off. France went on to lose on penalty kicks.

"The Italians did everything they could do to provoke Zidane," France defender William Gallas said. Seconds before, Materazzi had wrapped his arm around Zidane just as a French attack on goal passed harmlessly by. The two exchanged words as they walked back up the field, well behind the play. Then, without warning, Zidane spun around, lowered his head and rammed Materazzi, knocking him to the ground.

The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA investigate and take any appropriate action.

Materazzi, meanwhile, was quoted as denying the terrorist comment. "It is absolutely not true, I didn't call him a terrorist, I don't know anything about that," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Materazzi as saying when he arrived with his team at an Italian military airfield. "What happened is what all the world saw live on TV," the Italian player said, referring to the head-butting.

Zidane's agent, Alain Migliaccio, was quoted by the BBC as saying the France captain told him the Italian "said something very serious to him, but he wouldn't tell me what.”. Whatever it was, it was enough to infuriate Zidane. Zidane's red card was anything but unusual. He was sent off 14 times in his career at the club and international level.

At the 1998 World Cup, he stomped on a Saudi Arabian opponent. Sitting out a two-match ban, he came back to score two goals against Brazil in the final. Five years ago with Juventus, he head-butted an opponent in a Champions League match against Hamburger SV after being tackled from behind.

"This morning, Zinedine, what do we tell our children, and all those for whom you were the living role model for all times?" French sports daily L'Equipe wrote. Zidane, whose parents emigrated to France from Algeria, became a proud symbol of a multicultural France and is adored in Algeria.

In the mountains where Zidane's parents grew up, Atmanne Chelouah carried off a life-size cardboard cutout of the player at "Cafe Zizou" after the red card. "We are very disappointed," Chelouah said. "He should have kept his cool."

But lashing out is nothing new to Zidane, who grew up playing on concrete in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood of Marseille, where fouls and insults are met with instant retribution. "You can take the man out of the rough neighborhood, but you can't take the rough neighborhood out of the man," striker Thierry Henry said Sunday.


According to the dictionary:

a terrorist is somebody who uses violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, to intimidate

a head-butt means to hit somebody a deliberate hard blow with the forehead or the top of the head.

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