He is recognised as the finest player France has produced, eclipsing Michel Platini, and the world’s best since Diego Maradona. But why? What makes Zinedine Zidane so special?
The answer, say the men who should know, is a rare blend of talent and attitude.. The other contender for comeback of the year is their opposition, Italy. From the disintegration of Serie A has been born a team of staggering courage, one that looks like a finely honed club side – not a collective of players contemplating the dissolution of their national game.
This World Cup final is an absorbing retrospective on a great era, an ending rather than a beginning. But an ending that celebrates Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thu-ram and Claude Makelele, that gives centre stage to Fabio Cannavaro, Andrea Pirlo and perhaps Alessandro Del Piero, promises to be a spectacular goodbye to Germany 2006.. So much of the story of arguably the heaviest challenge ever to face a team in a match of such importance will be reflected in these faces inevitably made moist by the effects of the vast and desperate yearning which will be so visible in the great piazzas of Italy, the square of the Duomo in Milan, the Circo Massimo in Rome and the Plebiscito in Naples. These are cities that normally rarely pause in their scorn for each other but tomorrow night they will be united in a single heartbeat..
A lame duck manager with dwindling credibility among his players, an iconic captain fighting the ravages of age and one brilliant, moody striker. Sound familiar? The travails of France may have startling parallels with England’s recent adventures but the fact that tomorrow in Berlin Les Bleus contest the World Cup final is testament to the most extraordinary international renaissance of recent times. Here is such a time and if there is any doubt the faces of the Azzurri, Italy’s national team, need to be studied as they walk into the magnificent Olympiastadion tomorrow evening. What could I possibly say that he would be remotely interested in? Ordinarily nothing, but here in this marvellous World Cup world I’ve been living in for a month, all things are possible: Pele and I have a mutual friend “Leonardo,” I spluttered “Leonardo I’m working with Leonardo.”. Sometimes football’s colonisation of the world’s emotions sheds all mystery: it becomes a compelling, simple truth.
