La tête de Zidane

I've been thinking continuously about Zinedine Zidane's infamous headbutt of Marco Materazzi, and frankly I still don't know what to conclude. With Zidane apparently ready to speak to the media on Wednesday, I figured I'd poll the audience. I know there are some sports fans out there.

In case you're not (as) familiar (as you should be) with the (world-altering) situation, The New York Times World Cup blog ran an excellent, link-filled overview of the incident, and you can see the headbutt itself in about a million different clips on YouTube, which is apparently booming thanks to the clips. My favorite is this French-language version. Mais pourquoi? Watch and listen to see.

In one sense, Zidane's reaction is idiotic and unforgiveable: he allows his opponent to get to him, reacts with violence at a crucial moment in the match, and cripples his team in the biggest single game in the world, which also just happens to be his last as an international. A professional athlete - even one with Zidane's history of violent overreaction - has to have better control of himself, no? Has to, because his team and, in this context, his country needs him to do so.

In another sense, though, I disagree with virtually everything I just wrote. It's very likely that Materazzi grievously insulted Zidane. Online, one can find speculation that the Italian said Zidane's sister was a prostitute or his father was a traitor, that he called Zidane himself a terrorist, and that he expressed a hope that Zidane's beloved former coach, recently dead of cancer, had suffered painfully. That last one really got me, for some reason. We can rest those speculations - which Zidane may himself clarify - on firmer bedrock: the knowledge that Materazzi is a thug of Caponean proportions. Two YouTube videos amply demonstrate that the guy loves the two-footed tackle and the dangeous kick. In addition, it looks to me like Materazzi (who's 6'4" and 180 pounds) goes down a bit too easily from Zidane's headbutt. Granting that he wasn't grazed by Zidane's noggin, it still looks like Marco may have simulated just a bit - cheating for the win. (I am not volunteering to serve as the subject of an experiment on the matter.) And Materazzi responded with the utmost disingenuousness to a question about whether he'd called Zidane a terrorist: "It is absolutely not true. I didn’t say terrorist. I’m ignorant, I don’t even know what it means." Uh-huh. Riiiiiight. Summing all this up, he sure seems like the kind of guy who might deserve a headbutt to the sternum.

Which takes me right back to my first position: what sort of fool lets himself get provoked by a thug into an assault that leads to ejection at a crucial moment of the most important football match in the world? Help me out here. What do you guys think?

UPDATE: Zidane's statement on Wednesday:

I want to ask for forgiveness from all the children who watched that.

There was no excuse for it. I want to be open and honest about it... You hear those things once and you try to walk away. That's what I wanted to do because I am retiring. You hear it a second time and then a third time... I can't regret what I did because it would mean that he (Materazzi) was right to say what he said.

This was not something to do. I want to make it clear because it was watched by two billion people and by millions of kids. I want to apologise to them but I can't regret what I did because it would mean that he (Materazzi) was right to say what he said.