Culture: Sport: World Cup glow is gone, but Zidane's headbutt lives

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The hero of the World Cup, its Most Valuable Player, a status which may be stripped from him but remains true enuff his nevertheless, was Zinedine Zidane. A French-born français of Algerian immigrant parentage, Zidane was captain of a team that was composed mostly of immigrant Blacks or the children of immigrants. The team in large part came from the very banlieus that proudced the riots over immigrant youth unemployment, and the structural racial disadvantage that is intrinsic to French society today.

In comparison, Italy fielded an all-white team. It won by a hair, after the l'affaire Zidane-Matrazzi took place for thw whole world to see (but could not hear). It was Matrazzi who hurled an insult at the wrong moment at the wrong footballer. Matrazzi ended up on the ground after getting a headbutt, which you can see replayed over and over at I've Made a Huge Tiny Mistake, a website devoted mostly to sports guffaws. The headbutt was not the guffaw in this case, rather the insulting mouth of Matrazzi who turned many nonhardcore football (soccer) fans sour on the Italian win.

Football / Soccer

If Zidane gets stripped of his honour, then the Italian team should be stripped of its first-place standing as well. In any case, Matrazzi needs to have his mouth washed with something harsh; he disgraced his team, he disgraced his sport, he disgraced the ideal of fair inclusive sport as an emblem of peace and peaceful competion for excellence.

The larger question of the racial composition of Europe's football teams looms large from the incident, but is so much more significant in understanding how Europe, and in this case particularly how France, creates the demand among immigrants of colour to find places in professional sports, shut out as so many of them are from other professions. Julio Godoy of Inter Press Service news agency and writing from Paris, takes a close look at the problem in his article, "World Cup Shows Different Faces of Immigration" (Jul 12,2k6). Click it up – mesdames, mesdemoiselles, et messieurs. - Owlie Scowlie

Tags: Resistance to Pluthero's bad blogging practices

• culture
• sports
• football
• soccer
• worldcup
• zidane
• matrazzi
• racism