Rendez-vous le 9 juillet (World Cup Revisited In Interviews)

January 16th, 2007 | by: Laurie | Comments Off

I have to say I haven’t watched more than the first couple of minutes of this yet, because I wanted to get it posted. I can’t imagine it being allowed to stay up forever.

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.