The Friday Fizz

July 14, 2006

After a long and arduous workweek, it’s easy to forget what’s transpired in the sports world in recent days and what sporting events lie in wait on the weekend. So, the Friday Fizz is here to remind you that life is not all about TPS Reports and moody bosses. Life, for most men, is about sports, women and sex, and not necessarily in that order. So, without further ado, the following is my weekly riff of newsworthy notes that you and the boys can use as fodder for happy hour talk over a couple of pints:

Never in my life did I ever imagine I’d write an entire article exclusively on soccer but since this is probably the last time I’ll even think about the sport until the next World Cup in South Africa, here goes nothing.

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. Apparently, for Zinedine Zidane, names do hurt but unfortunately for him they broke something much worse than his bones. They broke his legacy.

Obviously, World Cup Golden Ball Award winner Zidane’s mother never taught him this valuable life lesson because if she had, he would not have gone WWF on the unsuspecting Italian who had reportedly called his mom “a filthy terrorist whore.” Shaquille O”Neal said this week on ESPN Radio that there’s nothing anyone could ever say to set him off like that in a championship game. During the regular season is one thing but during a championship, there was no way. I couldn’t agree more with the Big Diesel.

Clearly Zidane is not the supreme soccer player he’s been made out to be because to be truly great, to be considered amongst the elite in all of sports, you have to be as mentally strong as you are physically gifted. The great Yogi Berra famously said, “Baseball is 90% mental and 50% physical.” I argue that the same applies to soccer, or any other sport for that matter. If players reacted to every racial epithet, mom or sister joke, or “how’s your wife and my kids,” comment, games would resemble prison riots.

This week, Zidane has provided us with his reasoning behind the incident and although he apologized to all soccer fans, the French National Team, FIFA and just about every other person or organization affiliated with soccer, he also said that he would react the same way if it ever happened again. While I don’t buy into the argument that his departure from the game cost France the World Cup, I do believe that his loss was a tremendous blow to the French team and certainly had an impact on their psyche and strategy during those final overtime minutes and during penalty kicks. At the time, France was clearly the aggressor with Italy looking as if they were literally counting down the seconds, praying for penalty kicks. France had several shot attempts on goal, was getting more corner kick opportunities, was completely out hustling the Italians and consequently, dictating the action. Zidane’s Red Card changed all that. Once he was ejected, France had to pull back and play conservatively because they were a man short.

Zidane acted selfishly and immaturely – plain and simple. While I certainly don’t condone anyone calling anyone else a filthy terrorist whore, a terrorist, or any other condescending or derogatory term, for a player to react the way Zidane did is unacceptable. My own athletic career was cut short because I’m 5’10, white, and have a vertical leap of about 20 inches. During my entire life on the courts and in the fields I’ve been called everything from Honkey, Wonder Bread and Casper to Baldy and Mismatch, “I’ve got a mismatch – gimme the damn ball, I’ve gotta mismatch.” For me to throw an elbow and go to blows would affect no one except for me and the offender. Yet it would still never even cross my mind to do such a stupid thing because first, getting into someone’s head is a part of sports and second, the competitor who gets rattled and concerned by what’s being said instead of what’s actually happening usually loses.

Shame on Zidane for falling for the oldest trick in the book. He got rattled, lost the mental battle, and had to watch from the locker room as his team lost the World Cup. If Zidane truly was insulted and believed he had to take action to defend the honor of his family, then he should have confronted the Italian player after the game. I can’t think of a better way to end coverage of the World Cup than with Zidane coming at the Italian with a flying scissor kick neck lash in the center of the pitch. I can hear Brent Mussberger now, “Yesss!! The Golden Ball recipient connects…yet again!” Instead, we saw what we saw and perhaps, now, Zidane has finally learned one of life’s most valuable lessons.