BERLIN – Zinedine Zidane hurt not only his team, but the sport of soccer itself.
Instead of one last great performance, the French star made an inglorious exit when he was ejected for violently head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest. In a World Cup littered by a record number of red cards, this topped them all.
What provoked Zidane still wasn’t known Monday, and he got a measure of redemption when he was given the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player.
Still, what happened deep into extra time of the World Cup final will be the lasting image, a bit like Diego Maradona’s positive drug test in 1994.
Zidane’s head butt turned Italy’s fourth World Cup triumph into an afterthought.
The world’s most popular sport found some solace in a new champion, Italy taking over from Brazil by beating 1998 winner France 5-3 in a penalty shootout in Sunday’s final after a 1-1 draw in extra time.
But this was a World Cup that promised so much more. The story lines were enticing.
There were the first World Cup appearances of Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney and Andriy Shevchenko and the talent that Brazil, Argentina and England put on the field. A new crop of African nations was out to follow the past successes of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. Asia attempted to follow South Korea’s semifinal appearance four years ago, and the United States was poised to build on its surprise success as a quarterfinalist in 2002.
All of that evaporated quickly. The World Cup reverted to a private party, European teams on European turf.
Ghana was the only one of the five African nations to get past the first round. None of the four Asians nations made it. Returning for the first time since 1974, Guus Hiddink’s Australia was the only bright light, but that was extinguished in the second round by a contested Italian penalty in the third minute of injury time.
Bruce Arena’s American team made a fight of it after crumbling 3-0 in its first game against the Czech Republic but looked out of its class, eliminated in the first round.
Argentina became the favorite after a 6-0 crushing of Serbia-Montenegro but didn’t make it to the semifinals, beaten on penalties by a resurgent Germany.
Brazil’s stars – Ronaldinho especially – left all their best form with their clubs. Although Ronaldo eclipsed former German star Gerd Mueller as the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer with 15 goals, Brazil made no other mark on the competition and was outplayed by the French in the quarterfinals.
By the time the semifinals arrived, Germany, Italy and France were getting stronger.
The Germans and Italians played a standout semifinal and the hosts, who lost that game thanks to two Italian goals within three minutes at the end of extra time, went on to finish third by outplaying Portugal 3-1.
Luiz Felipe Scolari, who led Brazil to its fifth World Cup triumph four years ago, extended his unbeaten streak to 12 after Portugal’s penalty shootout triumph over England in the quarterfinals. But he closed with consecutive losses to France and Germany.
Player discipline, and the referees’ struggle to deal with it, was the major black mark on the championship.
The ugly behavior was largely on the field, instead of the street. The tens of thousands of visiting and local fans were applauded by police and the German government for enjoying the event rather than wrecking it with violence.
But Zidane’s red card in the final was the 28th in the 64-game competition. A record four came in the second round game between Portugal and the Netherlands, and three players were sent off only 47 minutes into the Italy-U.S. game.
The World Cup moves to South Africa in 2010 and, amid fears of massive transportation problems, soccer faces a major challenge to turn around its battered image.
The problems go beyond the games to the sport’s world governing body, FIFA. One of the executive committee members, Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana, was sent home in disgrace for selling a dozen tickets for England’s match against Trinidad and Tobago on June 15 for three times the face value.
FIFA itself makes lots of money, especially from TV rights, and points to how the game is becoming better organized in countries that once had no hope of playing in the World Cup.
But there remain overriding issues of greedy players and club owners, negative coaches and inconsistent referees.
That makes Zidane’s head-butting all the worse. He had the chance to write the perfect ending to a brilliant career. Instead, he didn’t even leave on his own terms, thrown out for behavior as shocking for who did it as what he did.
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