Passing the ultimate test

I’d assumed I was the central character in my story till it occurred to me that I might, infact, could be a minor character in someone else’s story..

So I forgot to mention that much to my delight, I could watch all the big WC matches on a big screen while I was on my first ever vacation at home. Funny :). Whilst I was busy watching the games, there were these analysts who just read the papers and could understand if the team would win or not. Sheer brilliance I say! Anyways, the Zidane issue went way out of hand and I don’t know how could they grant him a punishment as severe as a 3 match suspension after his retirement. Haha…world full dumbfucks and their cronies! All smart asses gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict. Bah! Lets get back to the point which this post is about to highlight.

People have been talking about Zizou and his exploits during the cup but as far as these skanky plagiarists are concerned, (they mug the whole newspaper off or what?!) it begins with the customary head-butt incident. The discussion goes on and on and it becomes a treat for the people who are in it and for those who are enjoying the odd mug of beer in vicinity. Gossiping is fucking gay man! Bitching is one more thing, which is almost to the levels of wallowing with pigs. Good for us yokels who are least interested. Gasp! Why not talk about Zidane as a person and what he has achieved rather than the ‘greatness’ of the head-butt incident.

    People say that the English are obsessed with the idea of greatness. That’s not such a bad thing to be obsessed with in my view. Put the very, very good here and the great there – and ponder. What divides them? Who do we withhold greatness from one end and bestow it so willingly on another?

   When it comes to football, atleast I think I have the answer. Scan a player for possible greatness and ask: does he score goals? Good. Does he make goals? Good again. Now for the question that actually matters – Does he make teams? Has he created a great international team in his own image by the brilliance of his play and force of his mind.

   If the answer is yes, then we are very rare company – the rarest of the rare. Pele, obviously, Franz Beckenbauer, Diego Maradona. Me…I’d throw Johan Cryuff in there. I know he hasn’t got a World Cup on his CV, but should have. But that’s the level at which we are arguing.

  On, then, to Zinedine Zidane. And no argument, none whatsoever. A great footballer. If anyone has been in doubt about that, this last hurrah at his last World Cup, in which every game he plays might be his last, has destroyed it, reminding us all the ways in which his greatness was expressed. As ever, his presence on the pitch makes the team as a whole better and also makes every individual on his own, play better.

   Many of Zidane’s moves would have looked flash if performed by anyone else. But they were never performed for his own self but, always in context of the search for victory. Zidane was a player with an immense sense of style, but style was remorselessly subjected to content. He never played virtuoso for the sake of it, it was a temptation he was immune to.

   Always severe and serious, but with that strange sense of detachment. It was as if he were well aware of the absurdity of football and, for that matter, of life. All the same, he could still see no point in giving these absurdities anything less than his best. He played with a wonderfully Gallic sense of cool, as if he had a Gitanes in his mouth even as he turned, swiveled, and passed.

   But it was not what he did that was the key to his greatness, it was what he was. It was his presence  that made the fin de siecle France team, the greatest in the world, one of the greatest ever. They began their exuberant charge to World Cup glory in ’98 with a 4-0 victory so they’ve got no chance, I remember saying. Peaked too soon, haven’t they? And anyway you cant win the WC without a proper striker.

  You can if you have Zidane in your team, with his conductor’s baton and his slide rule and his falconine profile and his Gitanes ablaze. And just to prove that it was no fluke, he led the France team to victory in the European Championships two years later.

   I remember the defining picture of the triumph of 1998 – the hands holding aloft that monumentally ugly trophy, hands of every shade of colour that human pigment can come up with. It was a victory for a nation unified by un sang impur and at the heart of it, Zidane, with his North African blood and his hooked bill of a nose and an almost ecclesiastical air about him, with his widow’s peak of stubble and tonsure.

  Martin Johnson, the England rugby union captain in the World Cup Triumph of 2003, said that he never set himself up to be a leader. It was just that people tended to follow him, demonstrating that the true gift of leadership is to inspire ‘follow ship’ in everyone else. That was something that Zizou was able to do. Zidane was what David Beckham aspired to be but fell short of. No shame for Beckham there. Both reached for the stars; Zidane got there, Beckham dint but I’ve always got more time for the over-reachers than the giver-uppers. But alas, poor David, Zizou really was the best footballer in the world. Zidane really did function as the heart, soul and inspiration of a great team. Zidane really did win the World Cup. Draw a line between Beck and Zizou, then, on one side you have the very, very good, on the other you have the indisputably great
  
   See it’s easy to tell the difference when you know how, isn’t it?
On that note I shall set my books ablaze and start the disillusionment process of many a top rung studs as they call them.
Damn! Did I just talk about mugging? Worst ok? Go die you idiot!
Bah!