Zidane’s Coming Back! (Kind of) Be Still, My Heart

February 8th, 2007 | by: Laurie |

My headline reads, Zidane Returns to Action.” Which causes all kinds of autonomic reactions in my person. But it turns out this is a good news/bad news thing.

Yes, Zidane will be playing. But not in MLS. (Sigh.) And not as a long-term thing. And not in actual soccer.

He’ll be playing five hours of Futsal with others from France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team.

Futsal? you ask. What the heck is “Futsal”? Well, thanks to the wonderful world of Wikipedia, I have an answer.

“Futsal FIFA is an indoor version of football (soccer) that is officially sanctioned by football’s international governing body, FIFA…Futsal is played between two teams of five players, one of whom is the goalkeeper. In addition each team may have a number of substitutes. Unlike some other forms of indoor football, the field is delimited by lines, and not nets or boards which the ball may be played off. The ball used tends to be slightly heavier and smaller (size 3+) than football, and thus promotes better ball control skills as well as passes on the ground.

Zidane will be playing on March 25 at the Palais Omnisport de Paris-Bercy, and the goal is to raise the profile of Futsal, and to “raise funds for former players in need.”

And why does news like this always lead to me clicking on “airfare to Paris”-type links?

Hey, a lady can dream, can’t she?

France World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://www.connorfabiano.com Connor

Aww darn, I thought he was coming to the Galaxy too!
http://dordognequilter.blogspot.com/ Clare

Yes! When are you coming over?
http://france.worldcupblog.org Laurie

Clare, don’t tempt me, or my husband will come home one day to a note that says, “Gone to watch French football. Back in a month.”
sandrahn

Futsal is huge in Brazil and elsewhere in South America. It’s a terrific sport and players are big name stars there. Youth versions of it also exist and there’s a huge international tournament (which US kids always participate in and do very well) called jogo3, usually held in Rio. Wish I could see this game with zizou. So nice to hear he’s gonna be playing somewhere in something. There’ve been rumours about him coming to the NY Red Bulls after his visit to NYC last week (he came with Veronique, took in a Knicks game and went to an Adidas fashion show). SkySports had a story about it and several newspapers have reported the rumour. I tend to doubt it, I just don’t see zizou interested in living in the US.