Too Too Solid Flesh

Slate.com contributor Dave Eggers once wrote that “The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. There is no other sport that can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match.” As such, once could consider football as the most democratic of sports, the relative level of mediocrity of the self-styled guardians of democracy (the United States) notwithstanding. It’s rather like the organized sports version of hide-and-seek: it's fun, and practically anyone can play.

But at the very highest level of competition, even just watching this seemingly simple sport can induce a deeply felt sense of wonder. During the quarterfinal match against Brazil, a French wingman fired a speculative cross from the right wing to a running Zinedine Zidane. With almost preternatural skill, Zidane, despite running towards the right, receives the ball with his right foot, kills the ball ruthlessly, and chips the ball towards the Brazilian goal to a waiting Henry, all in one seamless sequence. The sheer fluidity of the movement, coupled with the ingenuity of the chip, and a belated attempt to ask the question “How the heck did he do that”, all in the space of a heartbeat, took my breath away. Literally, I had to remind myself, “Breathe”, which I did, eventually.

Yesterday’s finals match between France and Italy featured an almost relentless sequence of similar moments: “Breathe, damn you! Breathe!” There’s nothing quite like the experience of watching an elegant, brutal battle between two highly skilled, sublimely competitive sides, and getting caught in the realization, play after astounding play, that heroics like you just witnessed seconds ago, are threatening to become commonplace throughout the course of the match. It was almost like the classic Germany-Italy fixture a couple of days earlier.

And then came the head butt. I consider myself very privileged for having seen Zinedine Zidane play in this World Cup. Up till that moment, he was the quintessential footballer: wondrously inventive, sublimely skilled, unerringly patient in execution, and always, a class act.

And then came the head butt. Oh, Zidane!