Oct 23, 2015
I don’t play soccer. I don’t watch soccer, but I turned on the TV one warm afternoon in Vancouver. It was the summer of 2006 and I stumbled into the World Cup final between Italy and France. I had never watched France’s Zinédine Zidane (Zizou to his adoring fans) before, but it was immediately obvious what a magnetic presence he was on the field. He seemed to expend the barest amount of energy traversing the field, yet always seemed to be around the ball. Then in extra time in a tie game Zidane turned to face Italian Marco Materazzi and head-butted him square in the chest. Materazzi fell to the ground. Zidane was given a red card and sent off the field.
No one could believe that France’s legend, in perhaps the last game of a glittering career, could commit such a lapse in concentration. Can you imagine Gretzky losing his cool during overtime of Game 7 in the last Stanley Cup series he’ll play? France ended up losing on penalty kicks undoubtedly hurt by the absence of one of their stars and the Italian neighbourhood of Commercial Street in Vancouver near my home erupted in celebration the likes I had never seen.
The previous year in 2005 and 10 years ago this year, Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon filmed a documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (90 mins). The documentary is beautiful and hypnotic in a different class from every other sports documentary you’ll ever watch. Using 17 cameras the filmmakers follow Zidane through the course of a single regular season game. There is no commentary, only the sounds of the game mixed with down tempo music from the Scottish band Mogwai.
The film cuts back and forth between the god’s eye view of the game, how all of us watch sports, and the visceral reality of the game at field level. From the couch we can watch the game detached, but we are divorced from the physicality and emotion the players experience. On the field you can feel the pressure of the crowd, the towering stands all around, all those thousands of people focused on the 22 players below them. Zidane occasionally looks up past the stadium’s bright lights into the dark night’s sky above him.
Watching the players move brings to mind the Serengeti. The players run this way and that mirroring each other’s movements like a flock of birds all simultaneously changing direction. Younger players run wildly and energetically, but Zidane’s movements are measured. There is no wasted energy, no wasted steps. He moves deliberately, like an old lion stalking the Savannah. He has a curious affectation. He drags his toes as he walks during lulls in the action almost as if he’s pawing the ground. He seems in more than one way detached from the others, the game and the crowd.
David Beckham was his teammate at the time and watching the two is a lesson in contrasts. Beckham is all finesse – a pretty boy. Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, is a hammer.
Although this documentary was filmed a year before the World Cup final the parallels are striking. As the game progress you can feel tension rising. Players tackle Zidane, there are little bumps here and there. His face is a mask displaying no external sign of anger or tension and yet almost imperceptibly you can fell Zidane winding up. And then near the end of the game a brawl erupts. Zidane is ejected and he walks off the field – foreshadowing the same scene at the World Cup a year later. An extraordinary genius creating magic with one hand, while occasionally destroying it with the other.
Medicine Hat News. October 23, 2015.