And then this happens:The Daily Mail, with corroboration from the Times, has some information on what Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane to provoke the latter's career ending headbutt in the 2006 World Cup final (more info on that here). They both hired lip readers to decipher Materazzi's dialogue before the incident and this is allegedly what he said (translated from the Italian):
Hold on, wait, that one's not for a nigger like you.
We all know you are the son of a terrorist whore.
So just fuck off.
John MacDougall/AFP/Getty ImagesLindsay writes another post arguing that taunts never justify physical violence. I hadn't thought about the question before, having mostly limited my thinking about violence to the drab philosophical confines of the politics of war and Just War Theory. I don't think Lindsay's claim that physical violence in response to verbal violence is always immoral holds up. I can't discuss this further right now, however, but I am interested at least in opening it up for discussion.
Yes, taunting is a part of most sports. Zidane has heard his share over the years. And he has responded at times. In this case, the response was spectacularly stupid from the point of view of winning the match.
It also occurs to me - and this will sound conspiratorial - that this might have been an Italian tactic. 1. The already-tense racial context. The French team was perhaps the principal target of racism during this World Cup. 2. The Italian team's infamy for cheating. 3. Zidane is fouled and shoved the entire match. He is not a diver. But the Italians give him the spill throughout the match. The referee doesn't call the fouls. 4. Materazzi, prior to the headbutt, had yanked on Zidane's injured arm (injured earlier in the match, enough so that Zidane considered being substituted) and twisted his nipple. Look for video that shows not only the headbutt, but also what had taken place between Zidane and Materazzi at the top of the box prior to the headbutt. 5. Materazzi insults Zidane again. 6. Zidane flips. 7. Italy wins. 8. Italy also receives second place in FIFA's fairplay index in points incurred for fouls and nasty play.
UPDATE (10:50am):
Materazzi admits to insulting Zidane. Doesn't say what it was, however.
8 comments:
interesting take. Except that the headbutt did not affect the outcome of the game too much with 10 min left in OT. More importantly,it is a matter of personal decision displayed in front of 1 billion people. Personally, if I were called "son of a terrorist whore" by someone who has been chopping my knees for 100min, I would think for 1 sec and headbutt the idiot. That way I would be taking the stand that no one in FIFA has been efficiently doing against sneaking racism in football. No regrets,the game was going to PK anyway where it is a flip of a coin anyway.
It's hard to say whether it affected the outcome or not. I'm inclined to think it didn't matter much in terms of the outcome, which was random PK junk. In fact, France attacked pretty well even down a man, even down Zidane. And Trezeguet is a top-notch striker if we can even say that he was the replacement in the PKs for what would have been Zidane.
Re the rest, I tend also to agree. I don't think it's true that a physical response to verbal abuse is never justified. And, in Zidane's case, he had spent quite a bit of time on the ground, dumped by uncalled Italian fouls (plus the arm-yank and nipple-twist), so it wasn't purely verbal anyway.
BUT SWEET JESUS you, Zidane, a professional athelete, rise above!!!!
Lindsay can philosophize all she wants to about whether taunts justify physical retaliation, but the overriding concern in the Athelete's mind, ten minutes left in the overtime period, is, Don't, for Christ's sake, let anything these polesmokers say, affect your performance!!! RISE ABOVE!!!
That's Zidane's moral failure. When you, Zidane, are sitting reflecting on the game, you can say to yourself, (if you won) I ROSE ABOVE and I am a moral exemplar, or (if you lost) I ROSE ABOVE, and I am a moral exemplar, but the Italian bastards prevailed. What he does NOT get to say, now, is "Everyone knows I deserved to win."
It's hard to believe that Zidane lost himself in the moment so fully that he reacted as he did. But that kind of competitiveness, that kind of drive, that kind of intensity, is exactly what we reward players for showing.
It's a physical game, and Zidane reacted physically. No, he shouldn't have done it. But to condemn him for a moral or ethical failure seems to me to take the episode completely out of the context in which it occurred.
It's like getting mad at Mike Tyson for biting Holyfield's ear instead of smashing him in the face, like he was supposed to. In the end, what's the difference? We take pleasure in watching controlled violence, but get scared and pull out the moralist's corrective ruler when things get out of control.
Sometimes, you can't control what you create. And all of the post-game, armchair moralizing about Zidane's headbutt really smacks of hypocrisy to me.
And by the way, Neddie, that wasn't directed at you. Or at you, Helmut.
You're right, Matt, about the moralizing. There's something excruciatingly pointless about a non-participant stating, ex post facto, some ethical maxim regarding violence. It's at least a bit too precious for my tastes.
But I'm not so sure that this is hypocrisy born out of tacitly encouraging violence and then reacting moralistically. Soccer isn't boxing. Without violence, boxing doesn't exist.
The "hold-onto-your-shit, polesmoker" view is probably the better actual criticism of Zidane, Ned. The guy's a pro athlete after all. Some have said loftily that the headbutt shows that he's "human," not a deity. (Honestly, he's still part-deity to me.)
One curious thing, however.... I was standing in a pub next to a francophone African fan of the French team when the headbutt occurred. This guy erupted with "oh, yeah!! YEAH!!!!" and the fist pump. I found myself having a similar visceral reaction mixed with "oh, shit, he didn't hold it together." Given all the BS the French "African" team put up with, the long history of racist taunts from Spanish and Italian fans and players and coaches, there was a kind of personal and collective release that came with the headbutt. I'm still not sure how best to explain this.
One thing that worries me, after these several days have passed since the final, is that the Materazzi insult becomes grander and grander without us knowing what it is.
What if it turns out that Materazzi said "Zidane, you're a poopy head"?
hey Helmut,
I don't know French, at least not very well, and I don't know what nuance I may be missing from his qualified statement of regret.
Nevertheless, from my understanding of the translated explanation, it makes perfect sense to me, and I accept his explanation.
As far as Lindsay Bernstein's take goes,I think she's wrong. Is everyting and anything I might say about Zidane, or the French team, or the Italian team (or even Lindsay Bernstein) acceptable? I imagine she'd say no, of course not, but you don't respond with physical force. Well I know some people(like myself) have difficulty responding in kind by saying similar things, because they see that kind of response as dishonorable.
Also, I'm sitting calmly, not performing in an atheletic event in front of a live audience of thousands(I'm talking about in the stadium. I'm not convinced that the abstract awareness of a tv audience registers so profoundly on a psychological level and actually has a real impact on your level of arousal.)
As far as you being conspiratorial, you aren't in the least. Taunting opponents to get them to lose their cool is an old tradition in team sports of all kinds. Even if you don't succeed in getting them to do something to get thrown out of the game you might still succeeed in damaging their capacity to stay focused and perform. I was going to say an old and venerable tradition, except I don't see it as venerable.
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