I can’t believe how that Italian guy grabbed Zidane’s arm (the injured one!) from behind and held him. Zidane must’ve been really pissed for him to head-butt that dude. But he deserved it. Too bad Zidane didn’t do the same to the ref.

(Although I thought it was bad many of the French team, including coach, took off their medals as they exited the podium.)

Well , italians won the world cup of cinema.

I’m really disgusted by fifa, they are totally corrupt. Remember how Ghana lost ? the referree was totally racist and clearly forced them to lose. They didn’t use the replay technology there, but for zidane they did!
Fifa you should be ashamed of your corruption!

c’est trop injuste!

I’m italian, and honestly this is the only world cup I’m NOT happy to have won. Because of all those weird thing: maybe italy would have won anyway at penalties even with Zidane on, but who knows? maybe he would have scored the penalty instead of Trezeguet.
In Italy however not everyone is blind, some journalists criticized buffon: first he screams and call referee to get zidane out, then he goes near him and hugs him. WTF? if I was Zidane I would have given him a head too!

like my bud, angry b always says, “the italian team is evil!” he is right because they truly are. the treachery, however, wasn’t limited to that game. it was all over world cup, particularly the brazil/ivory coast among others. it’s so whack, isn’t it?

oh yea, i saw that, the removing of the medals. thought that was so good! they all knew the truth. the italian win was mega dishonorable.

forza! jack norton!!

One thing is sure, people will more remember France than italy from world cup 2006! Zidane is a genius of marketing!
ALLEZ LES BLEUS!

Yes I am pretty disgusted too. Sad to say, but as long as I remember watching soccer, ages ago, Italians have akways been known to be the kings of faking it. It is dirty, especially when they stop playing when they see that are overwhelmed! The French team played much better yesterday. Ironic to see that it happens that the dominant team does not always win.

Thank you so much for a very eloquent post, by someone who definitely knows tons more about world soccer than I do. Actually, I know practically nothing. My take on the Italians, just from hearsay, was identical to yours, and you seem to have more substantiation re. their “dirty” tricks that I do.

I did not watch the trophy presentation, and did not see the French team members taking off their medals.

I was also not aware that Zidane had been named the best player of the World Cup.

en detail:
“Tout au long de la rencontre, Marco Materazzi, qui était chargé de surveiller Zidane dans la surface de réparation, avait apparemment continuellement matraqué le capitaine français de paroles indélicates, voire même injurieuses, que le milieu de terrain français a longtemps fait de négliger.

Toutefois, après cette séquence, Zidane a signalé à Materazzi, en lui montrant la manche de son maillot:

- “Ordinanza de tirare il costume!!” (Arrête de me tirer le maillot!!)

Déclaration à laquelle répond Materazzi :

- “Taciti, enculo, hai solamente cio che merite…” (Tais toi encule, tu ne reçois que ce que tu mérites…)

- “si e cio…” (oui…c’est ça…)

C’est à ce moment que Zidane s’éloigne quelque peu du défenseur italien, qui poursuit, dans son dos :

- “meritate tutti ciò, voi gli enculato di musulmani, sporchi terroristici” (vous méritez tous ça, vous les encules de musulmans, sales terroristes)

C’est alors que Zidane, désabusé, fatigué, mentalement fragilisé, assène un coup de tête terrible au torse du défenseur, qui toutefois en fais des tonnes, action qui demeure toutefois inexcusable….”

thanks for the transcription of the conversation, brigitte. that is about what i had thought it entailed. what a jackass materazzi is.

clarification here: i am not saying what zidane did was a good example or was even good; i am saying that it was probably something he really felt he needed to do and it made the finals way more entertaining.

Way to go girl ! I love your passion in this text I watched the game but did not have any idea that there were so many referee payoff proofs (are you serious there ?) But we should have their exact number quite soon
I was just sorry for Zidane. To end like that. I seriously hoped they would start a huge fight so that many players would be sent out
PS : If Zidane hadn’t gone to Italy for a lot of money, he would not have understood the insults !
RePS : I just love the excitement around trying to mouth-read what happened… everybody wants to know !

Agree that it made for excellent TV.

At the time (during the game), I thought “Zizou, what the fuck?…” And then I thought, “well, he’s a nice smiley guy in all those commercials so, something must have happened…” and now I’m all “DUDE, Respect.”

Drifting around the internet is a rumour that the Fifa is supposed to be investigating and if it’s found that the transcript given above is true (holy cow, I would have headbutted too), there will be serious sanctions for the Italian team.

All I have to support this rumour is Zizou’s page on wikipedia…

You are sooooo protecting France because u are french i guess. Materazzi knows what and when to say , its just about his character, he was already famous for that. So the only silly and stupid guy here is zidane, cuz i think that should be a football game, and not kick- box or something like that. I totally disagree with all of u jurks