How could he do it? How could Zinedine Zidane, captain of the French soccer team, regarded as the best player of his generation and in the final match of an illustrious career, headbutt an opponent and hand victory to an Italian side playing for penalties? ”Materazzi must have said something, but whatever it was, there’s no excuse for what Zidane did,” opined one commentator.
His career, said others, had ended in inglorious failure.
But what Marco Materazzi said clearly did matter to Zidane. The speculation was that the word ”terrorist” may have been used or some other kind of racial slur. If so, it would hardly be a shock. Racism in football has a long history and remains ingrained. Think of the monkey chants directed at black players from English clubs in Spain; the description of France’s Thierry Henry by Spain’s coach, Luis Aragones, as a ”black shit”; and Paolo Di Canio’s fascist salute in Italy.
The question is not what made Zidane throw away the final chapter of his career, but why he has become such an iconic figure around the world, in particular in his country of birth. The politics of race and football in France are particularly revealing of French society. The predominantly African make-up of the French team and its unimpressive early World Cup performances had the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, fuming at the French coach, Raymond Domenech, for having ”exaggerated the proportion of players of colour” in the team. Le Pen claimed that they did not show enough passion when singing the Marseillaise. To the great disgust of Le Pen, France’s only emerging white star of the World Cup, midfielder Franck Ribery, is a convert to Islam.
Despite Le Pen’s xenophobic outpourings, the great majority of the French population were behind the team. The victory against Brazil saw people celebrating across the country, including the black youth from the banlieues. After the semi final, more than half a million people gathered in the Champs-Elysées, waving French tricolours alongside Algerian and other African flags. It was a reminder of how France greeted its 1998 World Cup victory, with commentators, politicians and intellectuals suddenly celebrating ”multicultural” France.
However, the millions who have supported this predominantly black team and consider Zidane a hero will have no problem voting for Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing politician who called the youth of the suburbs ”scum” last November, or even for Le Pen.
It is easy to understand why Zidane commands such respect among black and North African people in France. He is the working-class son of migrants who came from Algeria in the 1960s and grew up in an impoverished suburb.
For the past three weeks, the ”scum” from the banlieues have been celebrating the genius of one of their own. As a social worker from Toulouse told me: ”In defeat or victory, the attitude of France to us remains the same — but Zizou, more than ever, remains one of us.” — Â