Another literary giant born
Having the referee throw the book at Zinedine Zidane wasn’t enough for Marco Materazzi, the Italian defender Zidane head-butted in the chest during the World Cup final.
Materazzi is throwing his own book at the now-retired French captain with a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the controversy titled, “What I Really Said to Zidane.”
“As you will see, dear reader, I found it funny to explore the absurdity of the whole affair,” Materazzi wrote in a column on the website of the Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.
Absurdity is the right word. Materazzi’s book includes 249 possible phrases he could have said to enrage Zidane and incite his head-butting tantrum.
Among them:
* “Zidane, what are you doing? You haven’t lost yet and already you’ve ripped your hair out.”
* “Since Foucault died, French philosophy has [stunk].”
The ANSA news agency reports that profits from the book, priced at $13, will be donated to UNICEF.
Meanwhile, soccer literary circles are awaiting the publication of Zidane’s response, but translators have been bogged down trying to decipher all the nuances and subtleties of cursing in French.
Trivia time
France Coach Raymond Domenech, a bit of an eccentric on the best of days, has an interest in astrology that has affected his team selection, refusing to have any Scorpios on his World Cup roster because he doesn’t trust them and saying, “Leos often do something silly.” Yet two Leos started for France in the World Cup final. Who were they?
When ball boys go bad
More than three months after the fact, Domenech continues to exhibit signs of mental and emotional distress in the wake of his team’s World Cup final defeat by Italy.
After losing to Scotland, 1-0, last weekend in Glasgow in a qualifying match for the 2008 European Championships, Domenech, obviously disturbed, placed the blame on the ball boys.
“I was disappointed with the ball boys for slowing down the game,” he said. “I think they may have been educated in that. It’s regrettable that it was here in a country known for its fair play.”
In other ball boys news . . .
Cleveland Cavaliers forward Drew Gooden has a simple solution to the controversy over the new NBA ball, criticized for being too slippery to handle when wet.
“It might have to be like Wimbledon,” Gooden told the Akron Beacon Journal. “When they get wet, we’ll have to get a ball boy to bounce in a new one.”
The science of football
Football is different in Berkeley, as evidenced by the home crowd at Saturday’s California-Oregon game breaking out into a chant of “Nobel Prize! Nobel Prize!” It was for Berkeley scientist George Smoot, 2006 Nobel Prize winner in physics, who discovered the faint signs of structure in the early universe. The chant began when Smoot was introduced at halftime during a game in which the Bears discovered faint signs of defense among the Oregon Ducks, winning easily, 45-24.
According to reader Tim Smith of San Francisco, Smoot received another ovation when he led the Cal student section in several cheers.
“Yep,” Smith wrote via e-mail, “only in Berkeley.”
Trivia answer
Forward Thierry Henry and defender William Gallas are Leos.
And finally
Former world No. 1 tennis player Marat Safin, complaining to L’Equipe about his current No. 65 ranking: “If I had won half the [matches] I should have, I would have a different ranking.”
