good for you both for straightening him out. It was long overdue.

Allez

@lazaro….blah blah…I forgot more about football than you will ever know. Keep your Zidane fetish / love affair to yourself. Write him private letters an forward them to FFF.

@impartial….thanks for your great post blasting lazaro out of the water. He just types but doesn’t think.

regards
john

“Oh, and to the poster called “impartial” — sorry but your plodding and pretentious “analysis” is crap. Today every single time you read about Maradona, in every article that mentions him, there’s ALWAYS a reference to the infamous “hand of god” and then the drug addiction.That doesn’t seem to have diminished his reputation as a football god, has it?”

Thank you for reinforcing my point about Zidane. That is exactly what I said (know) will happen to Zidane. What did I say ……exactly this

“The Headbutt, Red Card and the walking off the field. That will be instant (reflex) thought and memeory of him.
Now the football fans will no doubt remember the great talent he was, but not before remembering his exit in the world cup. Thats just just how the human psyche works.”

Your hatred of Italians is very unhealthy and you should talk to someone about it.

Sorry about Spain and their perennial under achievements in International Play.

And Zidane has a zillion times more class than anyone on the italian squad ever will.

And anyone who says good riddance to zidane is no real football fan, they’re just ignorant about the game and are in love with their italianness.

Self-obsession and graceless winners, thy name is italy.

Seems italians loved zidane just fine when he was with juventus. Lippi has always loved him, and all the italian players on juventus loved him. I don’t know why italians now hate him so much — his argument was with materazzi, not italy. But what can one expect from a bunch of ungracious boorish clods?

If you love the game, and you’re not interested in all the nationalistic “my team’s better than yours just because of where I’m from!” crap, then you can only mourn zidane’s departure from the game, and appreciate his genius. There’s no one around today that can bring such gifts to the pitch. Zidane rarely fouled opposing players, he never simulated injury, almost never dived and inspired audiences to love the game even more than they already did.

I’m neither italian nor french, I’m from spain. France beat the crap out of us spaniards. It hurt — but it was a joy to watch the french style of open, positive football – it had grace and elegance and form.

Zidane and his team brought magic and art to the pitch. Nobody ever accused italians of bringing any grace or art to the game.

Oh, and to the poster called “impartial” — sorry but your plodding and pretentious “analysis” is crap. Today every single time you read about Maradona, in every article that mentions him, there’s ALWAYS a reference to the infamous “hand of god” and then the drug addiction. That doesn’t seem to have diminished his reputation as a football god, has it?

And before anyone screeches “zidane’s no maradona” — that was the same thing people said in the 80s about maradona — “maradona is no pele!”

The coarse, crude, slimy, vicious, negative, boring, graceless anti-football italians won this world cup. They can be quite efficient and effective once they decide to discipline themselves (which takes a long time for them to figure out how to do, witness their game against the US).

But they bring nothing positive to the game. Controversey constantly follows them. So many of their games end up in bitterness, resentment, anger – as happened in at least 3 games they had in Germany. It’s no accident that Zidane lost his control against italy – the team that will try thing, no matter how low, to win.

In their game against germany that vaunted tough defender cannavaro simulated injury dramatically, stopped play for several minutes, got stretchers to take him off the pitch, a minute later he was just fine, no problem. Last Saturday I saw him do it again at the Real Madrid-RSL match, a friendly where no trophies were on the line. He suddenly stopped play by dramatically lying down on the pitch staring up at the sky, feigning injury. A bunch of medicos went over to him, checked out this great defending italian pussy, nothing was wrong, and play resumed. He’s either a wimp or cheat.

And he’s wearing zidane’s old #5 yet. zidane never ever did this – he never rolled around the ground grimacing in pain, he was constantly fouled but almost always he would try to stay up or when he fell, he’d get right back up.

I lost count how many times I saw italian players roll around the ground in pain in this tournament. Zidane was kicked, fouled, brutalized and insulted throughout the final match. The italians pulled out all the stops to get him. Well they succeeded. He cracked, they won.

So why the hell are they so angry and hateful about it?