France loves ZZ's top
By JIM LITKE -- Associated Press, 1998
SAINT-DENIS, France -- It was not his
father's country, but by nightfall, all of France belonged to Zinedine Zidane.
On Sunday, he became a testimonial to how much a sport can change a nation: Two
goals on a picture-perfect evening and all of a sudden, France was at his feet.
The same France that, three decades earlier, barely let his Algerian father in.
When this World Cup began, the French said they would never lavish their
interest and affection on a game, especially one so strongly rooted in the
working class. But as the clock pushed the 64th and final game of the tournament
toward its stunning conclusion -- France 3, Brazil 0 -- all pride and pretense
dissolved and a few hundred years of Gallic reserve spilled into the streets of
Paris in the form of wild celebrations.
The moment it ended, the man who uncorked all this jubilation held his shirt in
both hands, pressed the jersey of "Les Bleus" to his lips, and kissed it. Then
the 25-year-old Zidane, who learned to play the game on the narrow streets in
the tough Castellane section of Marseilles, kissed his teammates and, finally,
the gold trophy itself.
Much of the buildup heading into the final was on the glittering stars
sprinkled through the roster of four-time champion Brazil: Ronaldo, Rivaldo,
Roberto Carlos, Denilson.
"But we proved that we have great players, too," French coach Aime Jacquet said
with a nod toward Zidane.
If the outcome was unlikely, Zidane's pivotal role in it was not. It was the
way he scored both goals that was unusual.
"Zidane -- with his head -- who would have thought that?" Jacquet said.
Zidane's magic was supposed to be in his feet.
His remarkable dribbling skills were honed as a kid by playing on a concrete
path about 150 yards long and 15 feet wide. It was the one spot in the
neighborhood that he and his friends could call their own.
"A field to play on? That was too much to ask for," Zidane recalled not long
ago, after signing a multimillion-dollar deal with the legendary Italian club,
Juventus.
Still, those games prepared him well. Zidane's talent was evident by age 13,
when he left Marseille and apprenticed in the youth program at Cannes. Three
years after that, he made his debut in France's First Division, playing against
men. Soon he was bought by a bigger club in Bordeaux. By 1996, he had grown too
expensive for France, leaving his country to join Juventus, the New York Yankees
of club soccer and the most storied club in Italy.
In many ways, his career paralleled that of Michel Platini, the former French
star who was president of the World Cup organizing committee. Both were sons of
immigrants, and Platini, from an Italian family in the Lorraine region, also
learned the game playing in the streets.
Platini, too, starred at Juventus, and like Zidane, came into a World Cup
shouldering the hopes of an entire nation.
But Sunday night, they parted company in this sense -- as much as Platini was
lionized, a fickle French sporting public has always reserved its biggest
ovations for winners. And with the exception of a Davis Cup and a world handball
title, its champions have always been individuals: Olympic gold medal skier
Jean-Claude Killy, Tour de France cyclist Bernard Hinault, and race car driver
Alain Prost.
But this win will make luminaries of Zidane and his teammates long after the
warm summer night celebration along the Champs-Elysees plays itself out.
"It was the first time France is world champion, so it has to be
extraordinary," he said. "It's incredible. There are no words."
For him, perhaps not. For the rest of France, there will be plenty.
Earlier in the week, as the nation gathered up the team in an increasingly
public embrace, it began to notice how much the players reflected the changing
faces of a France struggling to absorb wave after wave of immigrants. In
addition to traditional Frenchmen Emmanuel Petit and Laurent Blanc, "Les Bleus"
featured blacks, including defenders Marcel Desailly and Lilian Thuram, who were
born in Ghana and Guadeloupe; and "beurs," as North African immigrant families
like Zidane's are known.
As the team's bandwagon made room for more people, so did the definition of
what it meant to be French. And so it was no mistake that when Prime Minister
Lionel Jospin called himself a supporter, he said he was both Jacquet and Zidane,
both coach and player, both native Frenchman and immigrant son.
Slam soccer