Zinedine Zidane The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Hero

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Zinedine Zidane The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of a Hero
In the 110th minute of the World Cup final, 12 tense Italians sit around a big screen TV a restaurant in downtown Manhattan shouting at the players on the field, “Vai, vai, subito!” Suddenly the action stops; the Italian defender, Marco Materazzi, is on the ground. Buffon, the goal keeper, runs out of his box pointing and yelling angrily, and his teammates Cannevaro, Del Piero, Gattuso gather around the referee gesticulating wildly. We look at each other puzzled and ask, “Che succede?” What’s happening? What’s the big deal? It’s just another player down. Then we see it: the instant replay. The room erupts in anger and disbelief; untranslatable curses fill the air. The Univision commentator shouts, “No es normal! No es normal!” No, it wasn’t normal. It was freakishly abnormal. The great French football hero, in the last minutes of the last game of his career, had just driven his head and body full force into the Italian player for what seemed like no good reason. A second replay attempted to shed some light on the bizarre attack: A defensive move, words exchange. So far pretty typical football, we think. Then we see it spelled out: Zidane running on ahead, turning, planting his feet, waiting for Materazzi to approach, and—BAM! “OOOH!” We cry out, clutching our chests in unison. This wasn’t the usual hotheaded shoving about, this looked cool and premeditated. Our faces morph into question marks. What? Why? How? Huh? My eyes water even as I cry foul. Foul that Materazzi was assaulted so hatefully and foul that it was my beautiful Zizou who had done the hateful act. “They’re sure taking their time with the red card,” the commentator argues in Spanish. “RED CARD, RED CARD!” the room roars. My head is spinning—Dear God, is it really going to end like this? Finally, the FIFA official walks toward Zizou, his hand in his back pocket. The commentator repeats excitedly, “Ahí viene la roja! Ahí viene la roja!—Here comes the red card!” The room murmurs in anticipation, then whoops as the referee hoists the red card over Zidane’s head. I collapse into my chair. “Adiós, Zinédine! Adiós Zidane! Adiós al fútbol!” the television voice chants gleefully as Zidane, head bowed, walks off the field past the World Cup trophy, grumbling and peeling tape off his hands. “Your Zidane was a bad boy,” comes a text message from my friend Matthew. Yes, he was. A really bad boy. Angry and watery-eyed, I sat in my Italian jersey, the only one in the room mourning Zinédine Zidane’s abrupt and shameful exit from our lives. Sure I wanted Italy to win, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow God sacrificed my beloved Zizou in exchange. “We still can’t quite believe that the last act of an artist’s career should have been an assault,” Le Parisien bemoaned the next day. “We were left speechless by such stupidity,” Le Figaro complained about Zidane’s “final and odious headbutt.” L’Equipe called it “stupid” and “irreparable.” If fact, we all felt betrayed and angry, didn’t we? Our hero had fallen. Or more accurately, he had felled himself. Our perfect, brilliant, wonderful Zizou has just pissed all over us, thumbed his nose at us, at his teammates, his country, his career. It was not supposed to be like this. He was supposed to be better than this, bigger than this. He was supposed to give us an exit worthy of his career, something we could hang on to, tell our grandchildren about. He owed us that, didn’t he? Weeks later there is still much debate. Why do we care so much? We care because when a hero falls in our eyes, we lose our own sense of self. We’re forced to face our own weaknesses. Heroes are signposts. They tell us who we should be, and how we are meant to behave. They strive and fly high while we watch and aspire. They live our lives out loud for us. Of course, there is one major flaw in this. We create our heroes; they don’t create themselves. We need them, but we need them to be what we want them to be. We (the media, the fans, and the highly-paid PR firms) decide the story, the behavior, the packaging. Zinédine Zidane’s package: The kid from the mean streets of Marseille who made good. A symbol for poor kids everywhere. The brilliant, handsome, soft-spoken, humble gentleman of the sport, all wrapped up in Christian Dior. Sure, it looks good on the hero, but somewhere underneath a man is itching to get out. And on July 9th, that man burst forth, thrusting his head right through his own iconic hero image. Was it an act of rebellion? Or more disturbingly, self-destruction? Was Zidane saying he’s not worthy? If Zidane’s not worthy, what does that make us?    No, the hero must be redeemed. In the days following the fateful match, the PR machine and our own psyches got to work reconstructing the hero and stuffing the man back into that uncomfortable suit of perfection. “Damage control” we call it in the biz. Too many people hang on Zizou to let him go down. Soon, wild rumors began to circulate that Materazzi made racial slurs, a claim that even Zidane denies. Still, threats were made on the Italian’s life and the focus shifted nicely off Zidane to Materazzi as the new offender—a red card being exchanged for a red herring. The real point is not that Zidane headbutted an opponent in a World Cup match, the point is that Materazzi made ethnic and personal epithets. A new scandal is created and a once clear-cut case of foul on the field is turned into an international incident. You need a villain in order to have…
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