Zidane!
Out of context: Reply #23
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- 3rr0r-4040
"So you have your victory. It will be remembered as the final in which Zidane lost his head. Not the final in which France outplayed Italy for 2/3rds of the match and then went out on penalties. Not as the final in which Zidane exerted a mesmeric influence. It will be remembered only for his headbutt.
So you have your victory, and your bete noire. How convenient. Now Italy can claim their shallow redemption, make it seem as though as is OK, maybe not perfect, but OK in Italy. But anyone with an idea of what?s wrong and right knows different. In Italy, football is still the focus of racism in the top level.. A western European country where monkey chants and bananas are still a part of top level matches. We can talk smugly about how this is only a problem in the Eastern European countries. But it?s not. That?s why I was so glad France smashed Spain, and I would have loved them to smash Italy. Also, Italy seems to have never accepted its imperial atrocities in Ethiopia, or in the Balkans. People of colour do not break into Italian society circles.
But it?s OK now, you?ve won the World Cup, and Zidane, the perpetrator, broke the rules.Enjoy the hollow little reign.
The status quo in Italy receives its assurance from this result. Everything is well, we are winners. Those who complain and doubt are miserablist outsiders. Our nation, our spirit, is strong. Why should we change? Let us continue to live with all the familiar illusions intact.
And for the losers? The team who played for most of the game? Who were undone by their captain?s susceptibility to provocation? Nothing. Nothing but ignominy, criticism, condemnation.
The winners are vindicated, all because of the bete noire, the villain. They can justify themselves.What greater fallacy? The Italian team, untainted by hot-tempered immigrant children, has prevailed. So what if we provoked them pushed them to their limit of tolerance?
We are still superior. Italy, the isolated, insular, the singular.
What a victory.
I could weep."
copied from http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/worl…