Italy won the World Cup after beating France 5–3 in a penalty shoot-out following a 1–1 draw at the conclusion of extra time. The match had been surrounded mostly around France’s Zinedine Zidane and Italy’s Marco Materazzi: this was the last-ever game of the former for France, both were scorers in the final, and also embroiled in an incident at extra times that led to Zidane’s headbutt on Materazzi. The incident was the subject of much analysis following the match. Italy’s Andrea Pirlo was awarded the Man of the Match, and Zidane was awarded the Golden Ball as the player of the tournament.
The final served as a key match in the France–Italy football rivalry, coming after Italy were defeated by France in the UEFA Euro 2000 Final. Italy’s victory was their first world title in 24 years, and their fourth overall, putting them one ahead of Germany and only one behind Brazil. The victory also led to Italy topping the FIFA World Rankings in February 2007 for the first time since November 1993.
It was an incident which followed both players ever since – both were fined by FIFA at the time and have not discussed it until only recently. In an interview this week, Materazzi spoke in detail for the first time about what happened: “Zidane’s headbutt? I wasn’t expecting it in that moment. I was lucky enough that the whole episode took me by suprise because if I had expected something like that to happen and had been ready for it, I’m sure both of us would have ended up being sent off,” the former Inter Milan defender explained.
That was the final straw for Zidane, who turned and headbutted Materrazi in the chest. After reviewing the incident, the ref sent him off. Zizou spoke about it for the first time in an interview for Téléfoot in 2017: “”I’m not proud of what I did. One of the first things I did was to apologise to all of the young players in front of everyone, to all of the coaches who try to ensure that football is not about something else, not that. But it forms part of my career, it is part of my life and part of things which may not be that serious but it’s something which I have to accept that happened and take it on board”.
Picture Credit : Google