"When I say that France's team is composed of blacks, Islamists and communists, I am saying an objective and evident thing," Italian Northern League's Calderoli was quoted on Tuesday as saying by the ANSA news agency. International Herald Tribune <http://www.iht.com/> Zidane apologizes, but his family was insulted Peter Berlin International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2006 > Zinédine Zidane, banished minutes from the end of his last game as a professional soccer player, apologized for his red card but blamed provocation as he said his belated farewell and made his excuses Wednesday night in an interview on Canal Plus, a French television station. Zidane was sent off in the closing minutes of extra time in the World Cup final on Sunday after head-butting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the chest. The game finished, 1-1. France lost the penalty shootout, 5-3. Video replays showed the two players exchanging words after Materazzi, a defender, had put his arm round Zidane while defending. Since Sunday, lip-readers round the world have been busy trying to decode what Materazzi said, and they had come up with wildly different explanations. On Wednesday, Zidane refused to specify. He did say, under pressure from the interviewer, that Materazzi used profanity and mentioned Zidane's mother and sister. "I tried not to listen to him but he repeated them several times," he said. "Sometimes words are harder than blows. When he said it for the third time, I reacted." Zidane argued that while he accepted that what he did was wrong, the blame lay with Materazzi. "The reaction must be punished, but if there had been no provocation there would have been no reaction," he said "Do you think that two minutes from the end of a World Cup final, two minutes from the end of my career, I wanted to do that?" he asked. Zidane went on to apologize, several times, to "all children and everyone who saw the act." Zidane had said before the World Cup that he would retire after it ended. Asked if he now felt that he had some unfinished business and would reconsider, Zidane said his decision was "definitive." He said that the crucial moment for the French team in Germany was its victory over Togo in its last game in the group stage. Zidane missed that game. He was suspended after receiving two yellow cards in the first two games, both draws. France won, 2-0. "We had not won a game in 2002," he said of France's disastrous defense of its title in the World Cup played in South Korea and Japan. He did say that he would play again - but for fun. "I may play some amateur games with my mates in my neighborhood" in Marseille, he said. "Merci à football," he said as he drew a line under his playing career. Zidane is an icon in France. The son of Algerian immigrants, he became the symbol of the new multi-ethnic France in a team whose multi-racial make-up was criticized by far right politicians in 1998 and again before France started its surprising run to the final this time. He was the best player in the team that won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. He scored twice in the final in 1998 but he received a red card in an early match in the tournament for stamping on a Saudi Arabian opponent. His career is pockmarked with such explosions of violence, at apparent odds with his modesty and the dignity with which he has always played and conducted himself. On Wednesday, he was relaxed, until the questions moved on to his red card, then he became visibly tenser. He remained as soft spoken as ever, yet he also revealed the unyielding side of his personality as he insisted that Materazzi, the provocateur, must share the blame and the punishment. Before he explained himself Wednesday night, debate had continued to rage over the expulsion. Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, the governing body of World soccer, said that Zidane could lose his player of the tournament award, voted on by some journalists at the final. "The winner of the award is not decided by FIFA, but by an international commission of journalists," Blatter said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, The Associated Press reported. "That said, FIFA's executive committee has the right, and the duty, to intervene when faced with behavior contrary to the ethics of the sport." Blatter said he was "very hurt" by Zidane's violent reaction and that "to see him act like that made me feel bad, for him and for fair play." Zidane could also be suspended, but since he is retiring, that hardly matters. The incident rapidly became a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists and a platform for self-publicists. SOS Racisme, a French anti-racist body, demanded to know if Materazzi had used a racial insult. Mehana Mouhou, a French lawyer, has said he planned to mount a legal challenge to the result because he thought that Zidane's red card was issued after officials broke the rules and watched video replays of the incident which happened in the Italian half while the referee was ending an Italian attack by giving a free kick to France. Mouhou said he would to ask a Paris court to question the fourth official, who sits on the sideline, to see if he had watched the replays during the delay while the referee, Horacio Elizondo, separated players arguing after the incident. "If a judge determines that illegal methods were used, the proper consequences must be drawn," he said, The Associated Press reported. "That means that Zidane should never have been sent off and it would be impossible to predict what the match result would have been and it should be replayed." Mouhou said he was acting on behalf of "several soccer clubs." He did not say which ones. FIFA has said that the official, Luis Medina Cantalejo, "directly observed" the butt before informing the referee and his assistants. In a poll of the French public in published in Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday, 61 percent said they forgave him and 52 percent that they understood his behavior. The French president, Jacques Chirac, who welcomed the team Monday, called Zidane a "virtuoso, a genius of world soccer." Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French intellectual, both blamed and forgave Zidane for what he saw as an act of rebellion. He was quoted Tuesday in L'Equipe, the French sports daily, as saying that Zidane's act was the "suicide of a demi-god." He called the butt an "interior revolt" against the "stupid ivory tower in which he had been placed in recent months." In Italy, Roberto Calderoli, head of the right-wing popular Northern League party, refused to retract earlier comments in which he hailed Italy's defeat of France in the World Cup final Sunday as "a victory for Italian identity." "When I say that France's team is composed of blacks, Islamists and communists, I am saying an objective and evident thing," Calderoli was quoted on Tuesday as saying by the ANSA news agency. His comment, in response to a complaint to the Senate by France's ambassador to Italy, reiterated remarks made on Sunday in the aftermath of Italy's World Cup victory.
