After several days of silence, Zidane finally came forward with the following comment: "Above all, I'm human." He added that he didn't regret the head-butt that now marks the end of a distinguished 18-year professional career. As we note in today’s other post on Johnny Cash’s revived popularity, bear markets breed a social enfatuation with imperfect heroes and that dynamic is clearly playing out in Zindane and the act that cost a World Cup championship. Until Sunday, Zidane was known for his “sportsmanship and dancer-like style with the ball.” Due to his violent outburst, France lost the World Cup, but, in a strange but perfectly appropriate bear market twist, Zidane is probably more famous and just as revered as he was before the final.
In addition winning the tournament’s most valuable player award he has suffered no loss of face among his countrymen. “President Jacques Chirac has had only kind words for Zidane since the match -- reassuring him that France still ‘admires and loves him,” reports an Associated Press dispatch from Paris. “Many in France have already pardoned Zidane.” According to a poll published in Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday, a Fibonacci 61 percent of the 802 people questioned “forgave Zidane.” "We have made him into a god, we have canonized him, but he's above all a man, and a man is fragile and breakable," Former France coach Michel Hidalgo told LCI television. "He isn't Zorro, or the god of soccer." Zidane is simply making the transition from bull to a bear market hero as effortlessly as he once “dance” with the ball,. "I tell myself that if things happened this way, it's because somewhere up there it was decided that way," he told TF1 television. "And I don't regret anything that happened, I accept it." |
