Four Four Two - UK (2022-07)

elite talent – meant Los Blancos fell away. The names became more important than a team that was allowed to age, but Zidane’s art continued to be indulged. On April 23, 2005, 17 cameras followed Zizou around the Bernabeu for a league game against Villarreal – the resulting documentary film Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait was a real-time deep-dive into what it was to be an ageing superstar. If all art is quite useless, this is the epitome – it’s impossible to follow the game itself, just the balding, shuffling, monosyllabic genius who sweats profusely and flits in and out. Late on, Zidane hares halfway across the pitch to defend Raul, who is surrounded by Yellow Submarine defenders, one of whom he headbutts. It’s an eerie harbinger of what would happen some 15 months later.

“I was a bit disappointed with the film,” he told FFT. “They sold me the idea of the cameras, the sound, the montage. It wasn’t their fault because I wasn’t able to give everything to the project. That game was a bit sh**ty and obviously finished with the sending off. I can see from their point of view that they wanted to end on that dramatic point, but I’d have preferred a more football- related intensity or emotion.” Did he enjoy giving himself over to art? “If I’m playing in a way that is elegant, great – I like that. It’s nice that they say that. But I’m first of all a footballer and I hope people enjoy me as a footballer on the pitch: a competitor, not a dancer. I’m not there to show things, I am there to win.” By the end of the following season in 2005- 06, Zidane blamed himself for Madrid’s third successive trophyless season and decided to announce his retirement. “You say to yourself, ‘I’m an important player in this team and it’s three years,’” he told FFT. “I’m responsible for that. I might have stayed longer if we’d won more. In the end, you tire of it. In a hotel, in your room, before every game. I couldn’t take it any more. I left: that tells you. I had lots of offers to carry on. But I left it.” For the first time in his career, Zidane cried before his final game at the Bernabeu in May 2006, a 3-3 draw again against Villarreal. “I had a bad day,” he told FFT. Despite scoring, the fact there was nothing riding on it mattered more. “Right from the start to the end, I just wasn’t there. I was thinking, ‘It’s over, that’s it’. And the game wasn’t a good one. It was a game that didn’t matter and I was thinking so much about the end, what there was afterwards, what would happen next. That can happen to people, but not to me. I just burst into tears.” That summer’s World Cup would be his last act, beginning it still aged just 33. Zidane had already retired once from international football after a surprise quarter-final defeat to Greece at Euro 2004 solidified a feeling of despair that began two years earlier – then, the defending champions hadn’t made it beyond the group stage of the 2002 World Cup. Not only that, Les Bleus had failed to even score, with a half-fit Zidane injuring a thigh in the build-up to the tournament. When France were struggling to qualify for 2006, Zidane (as captain), Thuram and Claude Makelele all reversed their decisions as they eventually made it to the finals. In Germany, France opened with two draws. Zidane, booked in the second against South Korea and knowing he’d be suspended for the must-win third against Togo, kicked down the dressing room door in Leipzig. Instead of replacing it, local officials have drawn a golden frame around the mangled door, stud marks front and centre. France defeated Togo without Zidane, but he returned for the last 16 against Spain and delivered a goal and an assist. In the quarter-final against Brazil, he set up Thierry Henry’s winner in a man-of-the-match display. He then scored a nerveless semi- final penalty to beat Portugal 1-0.

Then came the final against Italy. In the seventh minute, Zidane opened the scoring with a dinked Panenka penalty of glorious artistry. He was in thrall to Yazid again, playing with the raw instinct he’d hidden since the streets of La Castellane, and would win another Golden Ball as player of the tournament. But, with 10 minutes of extra time remaining, it happened. “If you want my jersey, I’ll give it to you at the end,” spat France’s No.10 at Marco Materazzi, scorer of Italy’s 15th-minute equaliser and doing what Azzurri defenders learn in the cradle. Depending on who you believe, Materazzi either insulted Zidane’s sister or mother – the latter was seriously ill in hospital at the time. Either way, the departing playmaker turned on his heel and headbutted the former Everton centre- back’s chest with a visceral potency felt across the world. The image of Zidane walking down the tunnel, past the World Cup trophy, remains one of the great photographs in football history. France lost the ensuing penalty shootout. “If you look at the 14 red cards I had during my career, 12 of them were a result of provocation,” he later reasoned. “This isn’t justification, this isn’t an excuse, but my passion, temper and blood made me react.” The wrongs he still felt from that childhood racism burned hard and were seared into his soul. No amount of elegant creativity could hide it. Yazid made Zizou do it. By the end of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the titular character can no longer see a way out. Unable to carry the secret of his Faustian pact any longer after one affair (and murder) too many, Gray eventually drives a knife through his portrait, not only killing himself and transforming his body into a withered, loathsome pile of skin and bones, but also restoring his picture to its beautiful original form. When Zidane embedded his head into Materazzi’s chest, he did so knowing he was taking a knife to his own career, yet he did it anyway. Why? Because he followed his heart. “If I ask Materazzi forgiveness, I lack respect to myself and to all those I hold dear,” he later explained. “If I say ‘sorry’, I would also be admitting that what he himself did was normal. But to him I cannot. Never, never. It would be to dishonour me. I’d rather die.” Like Dorian Gray and his picture, Zidane knew no amount of headbutts could diminish the art he had helped to create, nor the immortality he’d ensured. Perhaps, as one left-foot swish 20 years ago proved, not all art is useless after all.

Four Four Two - UK (2022-07)

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