Head-butt Butthead

At last, the waiting is over! We learned yesterday what lead to Zinedine Zidane's head-butt heard 'round the world during this year's World Cup final.

As you may recall, while running down the pitch (or up the pitch, whatever), France's Zidane and Italy's Marco Materazzi appeared to exchange words, with Materazzi then grabbing the Frenchman's jersey, resulting in Zidane turning around and giving the Italian the mother of all head-butts.

There was speculation that Materazzi had insulted Zidane's mother, his Albanian ethnicity by calling him a "dirty terrorist"--who knows what else. Truth was, the exchange went something like this:

Zidane: "Eef you waant, I geeve you the jersey later. Quelle fromage!"

Materazzi: "I preefer your seester. How do you like my Vespa? Ciao, bebe!"

I don't know why this makes me laugh so much--insulting Zidane's sister was a stupid thing to say, and the head-butt was a stupid thing to do, and I hope it haunts Zidane for the rest of his life. It doesn't appear that most (non-Italian) football fans think any less of Zidane for head-butting Materazzi, but I'd be curious to know what the French really think. And I'm sure that not a single day of his life will go by without someone, somewhere asking him or commenting about it. In the football world, most of the hub-bub seems to have now quieted.

France lost the match--and the Cup--due in part to this. Oh well, despite Zidane's retirement--announced before the incident--it should make for some interesting future "friendlies" and competitive matches between the two countries for a while. And that, really, is what it's all about.

(In mostly-unrelated news, does anyone really think Wayne Rooney will be a better footballer after spending a weekend in New York partying with the artist formerly known as P. Diddy? Really? The weird story is here.)