.1. For the Quarter & Semi Finals of the World Cup, I found my soul mates in two men (who’d already found soul mates in one another and some other colleagues). In our building there are television sets all over the main floor. For the duration of the World Cup, the channels were turned to the matches, with people milling about on break, on lunch, and before and after work.

As did others, I too worked my schedule around the matches (spending extra time at the office to ensure no work was missed, but no game either). For Argentina’s final game (the one against extraordinarily beautiful beautifulCristiano Portugal), I was planted firmly in the middle and in front of one of the screens.

Out came N & R to watch the game with me. I do believe beautiful new futbol based friendships have been born.

.2. The three best things I’ve heard about Zizou’s head-butting of Materrazi come from:

Coquette, who examines (a) the inevitable WZF, Zizou? and references the head-butting incident as “the thing of which we can not speak.
&
Chester, who says he is happy re the Zizou move because:
“- He fucking head-butted a guy while one fifth of the world’s population watched on TV!
- As Ninos noted, Zidane totally used my “El Toro” move. Instead of wondering what Materazzi said to Zidane, perhaps the world should be wondering if it was a wise move for Zidane to do tequila shots during halftime.
- Finally, to the very end of his career, Zidane’s being was infused with football to the very core. So much so that he even fights like a football player: no hands!”

Brilliant! Hilarious! Check out both their sites; am adding Chester to my Interesting Places.

.3. Also from Chester, he says: “according to one newspaper’s hired lip-reader, Materazzi said some pretty nasty stuff and ended things with calling Zidane a “son of a terrorist whore”. Further information suggests that Zizou’s mother is currently very ill and in the hospital, and Materazzi (allegedly) wishing Zizou’s family an “ugly death”.

Which is so far beyond what any of our minds had allowed us to imagine as we watched Zizou head-butt the (allegedly) racist and ignorant Materazzi. When Zizou rammed Materazzi, people’s reactions varied from a “huh” to a “wuh” to an “eh?” (heard all the way from France) and then the mumblings began, all of which acknowledged that whatever Materazzi said must have (allegedly) been either racially/religiously motivated, or about Zizou’s family. What we didn’t expect was that Materazzi (allegedly) used, as Chester put it, both the ‘racism and “yo mama”’ cards.

What’s amazing is that Materazzi’s (allegedly) denying this, when there’s camera footage of the incident, and erm, that really interesting group of people, otherwise known as: lip-readers. His (allegedly) lame defence is that he’s ignorant and has never “heard” of the word ‘terrorism’. Wow. Way to (allegedly) lie, Materazzi.

There’s a saying in Arabic that is: “Ijjat itka7ilha, (not allegedly) 3amatha”, which when translated means “she tried to use eyeliner and totally (read: not allegedly) blinded herself instead”. It’s really much more masculine than that, but the essence of the statement is that the lie is so so so big, that it’s blinding and impossible to miss the (alleged) truth.

Aside: Isn’t that the weirdest saying? It’s like saying “she tried to use lip-liner but overdrew her lips” to say ‘she missed the point entirely’.

Note to Materazzi: EYELINER DOESN’T BECOME A (allegedly) RACIST IGNORANT SUCH AS (allegedly) YOURSELF.

But still…Zizou’s actions were not excusable, and I think he should have controlled his temper and rolled Materazzi in the parking lot later, mano-a-mano. Futboler to futboler, No Hands.

.3. Zizou is still my hero.

0 Comments