World Cup 2006: Zindane wins Golden Ball after all
Italy won the trophy, but what everyone talks about are what happened in the second half of extra time. Materazzi provoked Zizuo so much that one of the best player ever in one second of insanity took revenge with a powerful head butt right in the provokers cheast. What he said is still not known, but Zidane will talk to the press soon. Of course he shouldn’t have done it, but I have already forgiven him. Seems like the world has as well. So let’s forget about that and look at one of the other seconds that he had in his last match. France got a penalty early in the first half and everyone would have gone for a safe solution, but Zidane didn’t as he gave us a fantastic penalty when he chipped the ball in the underside of the crossbar and down behind the goal line. There is only one that I can remember that shoot penalties like that and that’s Socrates and he did it twice in the 1986 World Cup, sadly he didn’t score at the second one.
The question that we will never get an answer to is of course would “Les Bleusâ€? have won the final if Zidane hasn’t been provoked so much that he retaliated, but what’s certain is that we will miss him just as much as the French team did in the last minutes of the match.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Antonin Panenka from Czechoslovakia was the originator of the chipped penalty. He shot the winning penalty, chipping it down the middle and beat Sepp Maier of Germany in the 1976 European Championship. Czechs won 4-3 on pk’s. Socrates and Zidane bless their souls came after.
We will miss Zizou, he was one of the greatest probably top 15 of all time(Pele, Maradona, Best, Garrincha, Puskas, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore, Maldini, Baresi, Weah, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, and Zidane, and Zico or Eusebio or Platini) and while he might not be the originator, was the person who used the 360 spin move to greatest effect. He had two ways of doing the spin move and was a like Rudolph Nureyev with his spins.
France should have been champions like the Dutch in ‘74 and ‘78. Sometimes the best team doesn’t win but to their credit they made it to the final despite horrendous coaching througout the tournament. Just one glaring example in the final was Trezeguet taking a penalty against his club teammate at Juventus, Bufon.