Word: buttes
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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...
...Whatever the words that provoked Zidane's last on-field head-butt, the rage it revealed may derive in no small part from the strain of being Zizou. He told an interviewer two years ago, "It's hard to explain but I have a need to play intensely every day, to fight every match hard. And this desire never to stop fighting is something else I learnt in the place where I grew up. And, for me, the most important thing is that I still know who I am. Every day I think about where I come from...
...surprisingly, for many of the same ghetto residents he calls "my people," Zidane's head-butt of Marco Materazzi was a source of pride rather than shame. Kids on the streets of France's banlieue told reporters that defending his honor was more important than the World Cup. Indeed, Zidane's mother may have been speaking for more than just her family when she told a British newspaper, "Our whole family is deeply saddened that Zinedine's career should end with a red card but at least he has his honor. Some things are bigger than football...