Zidane’s Headbutt. I screamed when I
saw it.
Trash talk, like Materazzi's, is an interesting ethical
topic. If it is appropriate on the pitch can it be appropriate in other
workplaces? Headbutting someone is easy for an ethicist- only in self-defense,
unless the rest of the contact that the game permits changes the circumstances.
I will let others work out the ethics that should bind the athlete. I want to
look at this event, one of the most well-known in the world, from the point of
view of the interpreter.
I can think of no better example of the need to invest representative force onto sporting events. Interpreters pushed hard against what turned out to be the strongest interpretation-- an exhausted athlete flipped out. But no one just left it at that. That would just cancel out so much of what makes a World Cup Final an event. Every World Cup Final poses the possibility of someone moving from one level of glory to another. The headbutt stopped Zidane from apotheosifying. And he was close:
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| The score for the 1998 final had been projected throughout the match. France 3 Brazil 0 was the final score. "Zizou's" face and "We Love You" are then writ on the Arc De freaking Triomphe |
I am writing this during
the 2014 World Cup, two days after Uruguay beat England and it looks like Luis
Suarez could well be elevated from great player to an avatar of Coyote, the
trickster. A spot made by ESPN has just asserted that Messi will
become a Messiah if wins the Cup for Argentina. Zidane was almost there. If he had scored a
goal (he came close earlier) or if had just waited and scored during penalty
kicks... While he remains admired, his headbutt cost him the match and an
entire level of glorification.
Maradona’s
“hand of God” fits a narrative, especially after his second goal of the match.
He brought his handball into the narrative, explaining that he enjoyed it most
because England deserve it, citing their control of the “Malvinas” also known
as the “Falkland Islands” a tiny sheepapelago that was referenced again by the
Argentine team leading up to this years’ tournament.
Real
estate cannot account for the value placed on these islands by Argentina and by
the United Kingdom. Narratives can make a few islands, or a desert, into
something you kill for.
(Given
that we are poised to subsume ourselves into these stories, perhaps it is good
that there is a way to do this with sport? Or is it bad that something like
sport can foster a national narrative?)
Zidane had led France further than most guessed they would go. He was
playing like he did when younger. This was his last match as a player. He
certainly played beautifully. His sort of skill doesn't fit well alongside any
image of rage. So, what happened? Everything
we see is interpreted in reference to a background. Sometimes the background
determines the interpretation of the event. Sometimes the event pushes us back
to revise our background convictions.
Julie Foudy said
it well on ABC's post-game discussion. I am using my memory and could not find
a link to the video but she says right way that (1) Zidane just wasn't thinking at that point and
that (2) Materazzi must have said something that
makes sense of Zidane’s massive sporting mistake.
There are always details that conspire to make a moment become big. Materazzi did say something and then Zidane delivers the hit. Also, the visual was incredible. Zidane is always well-poised and Materazzi sold the hit. Before we heard from the players, media used this opening .
Media
sources claimed that they had hired lipreaders and then produced different
projections onto the moment. Lip readers depend a lot on context to do their
work. Importantly, they would not know for sure if Zidane were speaking French or Italian or
Spanish. or English.
Yet
many papers reported that Materazzi called Zidane the “Son of a terrorist whore”. I
remember verbally passing that one on. Another claimed Materazzi wished an ugly death on Zidane’s
family. Another claimed that Materazzi called Zidane a “harkis” which refers to Arab
supporters of the French regime in Algeria. (Materazzi would not know this, by the
way.)
Both
players have confirmed that Materazzi said nothing racial or particularly
vicious. Materazzi had pulled on Zidane's shirt. Zidane said, I'll give you my shirt after the
match. Materazzi said, "I prefer the whore that is
your sister." Headbutt. Worse things have been said on the pitch.
Something so childish just doesn't rank up there with the sort of thing that
morally mandates a physical strike, never mind one that costs the World Cup and pharoanic sorts of glory. (By the way, sexist
language should be banned and the word "whore" should probably be on
the list of terms that get you punished. The point still stands. You finish the
game.)
When
ejected, Zidane had to walk right past the World Cup
Trophy. So close.
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| 1998 |
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| 2006 |
I
forget which match it was earlier in the tournament but I remember someone
telling a referee that Zidane had fouled him. Zidane looked at the ref and pointed to the
name on his back. This is to say "I am not a mere player. I don't foul
people. Zidane does not need to."
Great players
benefit from their renown. In the English Premier League, Manchester United
gets a little extra time if they are behind one goal. The referees don't mean
to do this. They are operating in a world in which demi-gods do not foul to win and in
which Manchester United always get late goals. This sense of privilege may well have
played a role. Zidane had scored in this final match. Materazzi ought not to have equalized and he
should not be talking to him like one player to another.
Zidane still maintains that there was cause
for the headbutt. He has apologized to everyone for what they saw, particularly
to "the children". The exception is Materazzi, “to him I cannot. Never, never. It would be to dishonour me.I'd rather die. There are evil people, and I don't even want to hear those guys speak." Good
versus Evil instead of two millionaire athletes losing the plot. Many fans
think there must be something else to all of this.
As a viewer, I can see the headbutt interfering with the story of a players rise to immortality. There may be other stories at stake in the background.
Yasmin Jiwani writes
about a French constitutional order and a set of social
practices that could integrate, Black, White, Arab, Berber, Basque, Pacific
Islanders and others. There is an imperative to show that all of these people
can become French and comfortably identify with each other as such.
(Jiwani does not mention the French debate
over legally permitting women to wear the hijab in public but I am always struck by
many commentators who just can't separate the right to wear something from an
assessment of what it means. Public loyalty should not depend on too much
private allegiance to common, but not-public norms. This topic might take more
time than I am giving it. I still think it is a shame that so many people think
a hijab would make you less French.)
Jiwani argues that Zidane represents the benefits multiculturalism provides for France as a whole and also for the benefits posed by the French constitutional order for those communities that are called upon to identify themselves as French, even if that requires negotiation.
Zidane came from one of the banlieus, the name for the
towns that surround the big cities. The area where he grew up was La Castellane, just outside of Marseille. You'd have been advised not
to visit there. He expressed pride in being Algerian and Berber and French. He
was widely hailed as the best player in the world. The 1998 team had members
from African, the French Carribbean,
the Pacific, Algeria, the Basque country, and players who were uncontested in
their Frenchness.
One
player, Lillian Thuram was then and remains, a Black
Frenchman, born in Guadeloupe, who is intellectually gifted and a resolute
anti-racist activist. Check out this interview with him.
Jean-Marie Le Pen complained that the
team was not actually French. In 2002, Le
Pen, with around 16% of the vote, got into a run-off with Jacques Chirac for the Presidency. Many members of
the French national team, including Zidane,
signed a statement that they would not play for France if Le Pen had won. While
Le Pen’s victory was unlikely, this was a resolute statement that a
multi-cultural France is on strong footing. If a sport is going to do good in the world, statements need to be made that are this explicit.
The headbutt is
followed by an economic crisis. French voters seem to be flailing about, no longer sure of their arrangements. They are unsure about Europe and unsure about a mulit-cultural, rights-based, constitution.
Very recently, there has been a rise in National Front votes. Zidane ought not to be blamed. He has recovered his reputation over time. The rest of his career is noted. He still works for Real Madrid, a team whose glory is linked to a murky past.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter leads the party and has distanced it from her father,
who has been making Nazism-referencing jokes. Her policies though are
predicated on a strong idea of who is French and who is not. The French are
white people who are French. I can’t make their worldview much more plausible
than that. They are contemptible schmucks.
A country always has multi-cultural narratives at its
disposal. There is no place on earth that has been able to lean back on a single culture that settles questions about how to handle the present. These are in contention everywhere. Even authoritarian regimes had to go back to the drawing board.
The facts do not fix the narrative. The facts combined with the
background do not fix the narrative. The narrative is re-written by a community with a history and a set of desires.
I leave Yasmin Jiwani's depiction of France's understanding of self and return to the premature end of a story of ascent.
Marco Materrazzi had an incredible World Cup
final. He scored the goal to equalize and got Zidane sent off. Yet, he does not appear in
lists of the “greatest ever”. (He might in Italy.) That is because he killed
the story that 2006 was set up to tell.
The
idolization of the greatest athletes is the product of centuries of technology.
The stadium was developed over great periods by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
These stages and theatres proved so electrifying that they were featured in
every sizable colony. Plato thought they should regulated with all the severity
one would control a nuclear power plant.
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| Roman Amphitheater in Nimes, France. Source Donald, R. Wonders of Architecture (New York, NY: Charles Scribner & Co., 1871) |
Fascism tapped into these technologies
to secure political allegiance. The Olympics and the World Cup have run with
fascist aesthetics for the purpose of allegiance to a spectacle. The lighting
of the torch was first done at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in
front of a cordon of swastikas. Zidane’s headbutt was staged at Berlin’s
Nazi-built Olympiastadion. It is incredible that the final was
staged in the same stadium used for the Nazi Olympics. But it had the right
shape and scale for the event.
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| 1936 Olympiastadion. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R82532; Foto:Hoffmann |
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| 2006 Same Stadium Used for the World Cup Final Source: © Partner für Berlin/FTB-Werbefotografie |
These are hard points for a fan to take. There is a thin line between riding the wave of drama and spectacle and being duped by the drama and spectacle.
These are beautiful events. The beauty is what tempts us to go insane.
Television has added another dimension. We shared the headbutt
with half of the world’s population. FIFA has
a slogan—One World, One Game. It’s kind of creepy, really. Is that really the
goal? What’s wrong with Cricket and Muggle Quidditch and Curling?
Having one game for the whole world makes an apotheosis plausible.
David Goldbatt, in his The
Ball is Round, reminds us that a section of the Popol Vuh, a Mayan Saga has mortals compete in a ball game
alongside the gods.
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| See Michael E. Whittington The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina.2001. |
The Indian author Nalinaksha Battacharya has a wonderful scene in which a Hindu holy man tells the story of a man and a woman who are brought in as ringers for a match against the asuras.” Narad says “We can easily camouflage these mortals as gods.” ("Hem and Football" in The Global Game; U of Nebraska Press; 2008. 10-15.)
There is something about a ball.
Sometimes we see the life of a retired player and it can be
disappointing to see them as mere bourgeois mortals. I have trouble when
seeing the home of a current god of the realm and not finding stacks of books. And then some of them tell us about their political and religious
opinions…
The glorification goes way beyond the player’s actual (and
impressive) (and beautiful) achievements. Glorification also runs up against
the brute fact that a tremendous amount of the game is luck. If Zidane had scored on a header earlier in
the match, he may have been engraved on the pantheon.
If Rooney had been a few inches over on two of his shots two
nights ago. (Rooney has always struggled against the premature announcement of
his impending apotheosis. It is also hard to imagine seeing him as a
supernatural being. Being merely a world-class player, he is labeled a
disappointment. His failings will be cited in explaining England’s early exit,
which is ridiculous.)
Have we set this goal of an entire planet watching one match every
four years and following one sport between those matches because we live in a
disenchanted world, one in which gods no longer serve to explain the weather,
the stars, or the movements of money or power?
Is it possible to love the game and not believe in
it in quite this way?
For some, this is clearly a tight rope.
Even though the
anti-climactic truth about the headbutt was revealed, a sixteen-foot statue of the
moment was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in September 2012.
It was put on display in
Qatar in October of 2013. Qatar is scheduled to host the World Cup in 2022. They have invested huge amounts of money already and see the event as a way of putting itself on the global map. The sculpture was removed after about 20 days because local
conservative Islamic leaders denounced it as idolatrous.
They have a point.
I will
argue later that a sense of irony is essential for anyone who watches the game.
Cultivating irony will enable one to experience the drama of the matches, which
depend on the interplay of moment and narrative, while not letting those
narratives have a hold on conclusions one reaches due to the game.
One
should either “leave it all on the pitch” or consciously tell good stories,
ones that ought to be told.
--
See Amy Lawrence's recent
piece on
the headbutt, including a re-print of Kevin McCarra's Guardian article at the time.
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