Humorous. One of the quotes is something about “transforming an act of violence into a symbol of nonviolence.”

Uh…yeahrightsure. You’d have more credibility if you weren’t profiting.

What’s funniest, though? My daughter was in Italy for a choir tour over the summer and bought me one of these t-shirts. And yes, I love it.

(It’s in French, sorry. But if you speak any French at all, it’s pretty slow and easy to understand.)

France 2 TV,Coup de Boule Zidane – Watch more free videos

Yes, it was a year ago. The World Cup final. We were all watching as the game played itself out, with all the drama and trauma and excitement and violence that the promoters had hoped for/feared.

I was down in Oregon for my husband’s nephew’s wedding (which was on Saturday, the day before the WC final.) I very graciously and gallantly insisted that no, don’t worry about me, I don’t really need to see my favorite team in the universe play in the final. No, I don’t need to watch the final game of my favorite player. No, really. I’ll be…sniff…just fine.

My husband, intelligent man that he is, saw through me. Which is how I ended up sitting in a Red Robin restaurant in a Portland suburb for three hours — a restaurant so fantastic that they even had the World Cup final playing on TVs in the bathrooms. I spent the entire time trying to simultaneously pay attention to the game (over my mother-in-law’s shoulder) and listen to my sister-in-law and mother-in-law as they chatted about the wedding. I don’t think I was very good company.

What do you remember most about the game? (Besides the headbutt.)

I remember Thierry Henry nearly getting knocked out just a few minutes after the start of the game. I remember that I missed both goals — we were in transit from the hotel to the restaurant. By the time we got there, the score was 1-1. And I remember how much I hurt for David Trezeguet after the missed penalty. I remember how I couldn’t stand to watch any of the post-game.

And yes, I remember the headbutt. We couldn’t hear what was going on, so we weren’t sure why play had stopped. It all happened far off the ball, so they had to go back and find the feed from the camera that had been on Zidane and Materazzi. The first time they showed it, I felt like I was the one who’d been knocked off my feet with a head to the chest. I turned to my older son, who was watching with me, and stuttered for a minute or so. “That was… Did you see… Isn’t that… No, it can’t be!” But, alas, it was.

The game went on after that, but it felt over. When Trezeguet missed that penalty, it was almost an anticlimax.

And then we drove home, and I spent the next few weeks obsessively collecting YouTube videos and reading everything I could find on what and why. For some reason it was important that I understand. But I’m still not sure that I do.

But I ended up even more obsessed with French football than ever. And now here I am, writing this blog.

I posted this video back in January, but I thought this would be a good time to post it again. Partly because it’s the anniversary and partly because my comments were down when I posted it before, and I never got the opportunity to hear what you thought of it. It’s the first interview Zidane gave after the World Cup final, in French, but with subtitles. Oh, and click here for a link to a video loop of the headbutt, replaying endlessly…

An interview in Australian Four-Four-Two with M. Cantona showed up on my screen this morning where he discusses the World Cup loss to Italy. His conclusion was that this loss had nothing to do with Zinedine Zidane and the infamous headbutt. Instead it was a strategic error on the part of coach Raymond Domenech.

“From the start of the second half, the Italians refused to attack. When you see (Thierry) Henry have to come to get the ball and cross and there is no-one in the penalty area to get on the end – what’s the point of having four defenders and two defensive midfielders. It’s a serious, very serious tactical mistake. Worse than Zidane’s headbutt.”

Show of hands from those who disagree. Hmm… Anybody? You in the back? No? Just scratching your shoulder? Okay, then.

I’ve always wondered if I was the only one who thought that Raymond got off a little easy on the criticism after the game because of the headbutt. Since 99.999% of the talk after the game was about Zidane, and the headbutt made the French love the team even more… Well, perhaps Raymond should thank Zizou for saving his job? What do you think?

And about that headbutt, Eric?

For him, [Zidane] football is the pleasure of playing. It was not logical, he did not calculate. That’s not to say that I am encouraging people to start headbutting.”

Cantona claimed that Zidane’s headbutt could not be compared to his own assault on the Palace fan. “I jumped on a supporter,” said Cantona. “It’s not the same as reacting to someone on the field, it’s not the same gesture. What I did was more serious.”

Can’t disagree with that either. For comparison purposes, let’s take a look once again at Cantona’s reference point for the Zidane headbutt, shall we?

“Zidane…was caught on camera having a crafty fag before the World Cup semi-final against Portugal last summer.”

Giggle.

I mean… Oh, wait.

Nothing to see here, folks. They’re talking about a cigarette. Now move along.

(P.S. It’s probably a good thing my comments are down.)

What I can give you, though, is the link to the DailyMotion video, which includes a written article about the video at the bottom. I’ve run that article through the google translator and it is amazingly coherent and comprehensible, at least compared to most google translations.

So here you go, the video again, with the google translated article beneath the video.

I found the time to watch the full video the other night and highly recommend it to anybody who cared about the French team during World Cup. The entire video is World Cup clips with commentary from the players, and it’s magical to watch them relive the experience.

Or maybe it’s just me. (Although I’ll dangle the fact that there’s a Figo clip in here — in Portuguese, subtitled in French — to see if I can get Martha to watch it.)

It’s apparently the full-length Canal+ show,Rendez-Vous le 9 juillet. It’s an hour and a half long, but if you are a France fan who lived the World Cup and speak French… Well, here’s your opportunity to see and hear it from the players’ perspectives. (And if you don’t speak French… Well, most of them look and sound very pretty anyway.) There are even interviews with some of the Italians, like Buffon, and some of the transcripts.

Here’s a transcript from part of the film where the players discuss the headbutt. (I didn’t take the time to translate it myself — I just ran it through google and cleaned it up a bit.):

Zidane: “I assume” ["Assume" here being more "take responsibility."]
“It is not me… No, it is me. I do not want to say, “no, it is not me, it is someone else”. Unfortunately, it is a gesture which it is necessary to assume, I assume”. The ex-captain of the team of France had never been so eloquent about his blow of madness of last July 9. “Usually, I do not answer, usually, I pay attention, but there… (sighs) that was violent”, he confesses.

His tricolores comrades still do not go back there, even with time. “Yes, I am upset with him a little”, explains his pal Willy Sagnol. “On one side, I do not forgive him, with him we would have won”, said Claude Makelele. “In the situation, the one at fault, it is Zizou”, says Lilian Thuram without pretence. The continuation, indeed, one knows it. The fatal act of Zidane which changed the face of the final.

“A penalty well-kicked does not stop” summarizes Fabien Barthez in connection with the ultimate meeting of the penalty shootout. “On four penalties, I went three times on the good side, Buffon, only twice”, clarifies the new goalkeeper of FC Nantes. On the last shot with the goal of Fabio Grosso, he still believed in the good stars of the world champion: “I thought that it was going to strike the bar”, he explains. The ball finished at the bottom of the net, leaving a prostrate Barthez to the foot of the post. “Hardest after a lost final, it is to wait”, says Thierry Henry, who lost a second final in 2006, after the Champions League.

I’m looking forward to finding an uninterrupted block of time and watching this one.

A Zidane Video.

Why?

Because I can.

I’ve seen a couple of Zidane videos in my time. Okay, maybe more than a couple. This is my favorite. I’m posting this as my last France World Cup Blogger act of 2006. Here’s to more great French football in ‘07!

This is the Canal+ interview. I wish I could show the one that appeared on TF1, because that one’s a lot more interesting. (The interviewer is a woman who obviously finds him rather hot, which leads to a much more relaxed and interesting interview. He talks about Materazzi’s accusations of “arrogance,” his own “brutal gestures” and his “dark side,” and about the Italian Senate president calling the France team “blacks, islamists and communists.”) Unfortunately I haven’t even been able to find an English transcript of that one, let alone a video with subtitles. So this is what we have. It’s still pretty interesting if the headbutt in the World Cup Final captured your attention.

How much spectacular baldness can be crammed into ten square feet?

The answer, of course, is: About this much. Any more and I think we’d see some spontaneous combustion.

For more great photos, click here.

(Personal note: My flight to Denver was delayed four days (yes, four days), but I am finally getting out tomorrow. (YEA!!) I’ll try to slip in to post a couple of year-in-review videos over the next week and will be back posting Bleus News regularly as year-end approaches. Happy Holidays!)