Thinking back with fondness on Zinadine Zidane. We talk of the rise of the BNP in Britain, but in Spain and Italy fascism was popular from the start and it still is. Real Madrid has a hardcore group of Franco Fascist supporters and A. C. Milan, Berlusconi's club, has a hard core group of Mussolini style fascist supporters too.
In the light of this Zinadine Zidane's head-butt was a heroic attack on racism in Italian football. Whether the comment referred to his sister or directly to his race, it was a racist attack on a Frenchman of Algerian origin - after Pele, and Maradona, the greatest who has played the game. Sometimes you can't fight racism with words, you have to fight it, well, with fighting.
Zinadine had a choice: Let that offensive comment go by, or roll his courage into a ball. Zinadine, always the gentleman, lost his rag, and if Zinadine lost his rag, then it deserved to be lost. Marco Materazzi went down.
Part of the reason why the French team got to that stage of the World Cup in 2006 was because they first taught Aragones, another racist shit, a lesson: France 3 - Spain 1. "Why not go all the way?" Zinadine might have thought, "Why not headbutt every openly racist shit in football and to hell with the consequence?"
As Woody Allen said, sometimes the best way to explain things to a fascist is with a baseball bat, and the best way to explain things to a offensive and possibly racist Italian in an all white, Mediterranean team - in great contrast to the French team - is probably with a head butt.
Where were the Spanish Moroccans in the Spanish team? Nowhere. Where were the black immigrants in the Italian team? You know where they were; they were on the sidelines, where Mr. Lippi, the Italian Aragones, wanted them.
Investigate institutionalised racism in European football and Zidane will be vindicated. Because there it is. The deadly xenophobic stench of Mediterranean provincialism.
Zizou is a man. He had to do, what he had to do. Who gives a damn about Italy. France deserved to win, and the history books will recognise that.
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