Perhaps I am a day late and a dollar short on this whole Zinedine Zidane fiasco at the World Cup. Regardless, here's a $1.02 for you.Aside from the obvious way this sullied the final game of an otherwise exciting tournament (ratings were up 180% in the finals from '02). Aside from the irresponsible and reckless behavior, I think there are two things that have been lost in all the analysis.
1. The Italians are pansies! Someone cold-cocks you with his head, into your chest, and you fall down, writhing in pain. Your teammates, meanwhile, complain to the official. If you'd've been my teammate, I'd zizou'ed the dude and started a brawl. But, alas, the Italians, try to milk it and eventually get ZZ red carded (I'd argue no ref saw it till they showed the replay). Look at it from this perspective:
Marco Materazzi is lying on the scorer's table, meanwhile the refs are trying to sort out fouls on both the Piston's and Pacers. All of sudden, a plastic cup of water hits Materazzi. Materazzi rolls off the scorers table, sinking to the floor, clutching his chest, writhing in pain.
2. These types of things are bound to happen when you have two people with that many Z's in their names.
The thing of it is: I stopped caring after the incident. It sucked the life out of the beautiful game.
1 comment:
I watched the game and was horrified by the head-butt incident for these reasons:
1. I hate diving, it ruins the game of soccer making it look like a little league argument with parents of the injured. Get back up and sock the guy in the mouth!! He deserves it! Where were the teammates? Discussing ther next diving moves?
2. However, in a World Cup match where the peace of the world is at stake and the lives of the loosing team players hang in balance, perhaps a red card is appropriate. As a matter of fact, a Red Card to the North Korean PM for head butting the US and United Nations! The alternative is to slap the guy silly.
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