Word: butt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fact, the conflicting visions and divided loyalties that shape Zidane's Europe were on display in the World Cup Final long before the notorious head-butt. For France, all but four of the 14 players used in the game were children or grandchildren of Africa, from both sides of the Sahara. Italy's lineup, by contrast, had no players of immigrant origin (although Mauro Camoranesi's grandparents had left Italy for Argentina) - the Azzuri were, to put it bluntly, the whitest of the Western European teams at the World Cup. Italian soccer has long been a magnet for fascist nostalgia...
...reason the furor over French soccer star Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the World Cup final has reached such a fever pitch - especially since his televised interview Wednesday did little to clear things up - is that it's about much more than trash talking. Even if Zidane avoided confirming or denying the initial speculation that there had been a racial dimension to the insult that provoked him, the incident is a reflection of the social divisions that persist in an increasingly multi-cultural Europe...
...victors of 1998 were not "a real French team," but nobody cared: France had once again achieved the global greatness that had long eluded it on other fronts, and the architect of its triumph was a national treasure known as Zizou. But the continuing debate over the Zidane head-butt is a reminder that the harmony represented by the makeup of the French soccer team bears little resemblance to daily life in the French urban ghetto - of which the riots of late 2005 served as the harshest reminder...
Nearly 72 hours after French soccer star Zinedine Zidane closed his illustrious career with an ignoble ejection for head-butting an Italian defender, Zidane told a still-agonizing French public what had provoked the most notorious head-butt in the history of the game. Exactly what button had Marco Materazzi pushed to cause Zidane to forsake his teammates, and the still obtainable victory in Sunday's World Cup final, and instead to opt for the hollow satisfaction of corporal payback? What hateful words could have detonated the violence that provoked Zidane's ejection, and helped deny him and France...
...What will happen when Zidane answers the burning question? Probably nothing. Polls show 61% of French people already forgive Zidane for the head-butt, while 52% say they understand his violent response. Those numbers will probably increase once the exact words Materazzi spoke are known. Meanwhile, even after seeing the head-butt, sports writers voted Zidane the Cup's best player and awarded the Frenchman the tournament's Golden Ball - a superlative their peers denied Zidane in 2001 voting for best pro player in Europe, after he broke a bone in a rival's face with an earlier head-butt...