Zinédine Zidane –
He speaks with the ball and apart from that preferably with no one. He hates the glamour of his branch, nevertheless he is its brightest star. He preaches work and seriousness, but on the pitch he does magic. Too much pathos? Exactly but it’s impossible not to gush about France’s captain. The song of songs on a man who longs for a grand departure.
The divine man of few words
By Stefanie Rosenkranz for Stern magazine, 2006
Translated from German by magician10
It’s not that people get brighter in his presence, quite the contrary. They however become happier, impressed, sometimes they get touched by an almost religious fervency. Journalists call him “Genius”, “Magician” or even “Messiah”. When he appears “there is light”, “redemption” is near, or “deliverance” or “resurrection”. The French actor Roschdy Zem sees “something sacred” in him, and the comedian Jamel Debouzze thinks he’s like “Father Christmas, because of the presents he is giving to all of us.”For Laurent Blanc, his former teammate in the French national team, he is the “epitome of frankness, honesty and maturity. He is respectful and he deserves respect. He is something totally different from a player, he is luck.”
The boys from the Parisian suburb are now waiting in the cold for almost an hour to see this luck. They came from their homely concrete to the forest of Rambouillet with their youth team to watch the training of the French national team at Clairefontaine. They are boys the type of “(title of a German television comedy show that deals with prejudices towards immigrants and the youth is portrayed like a bunch of sleazy trouble makers)”, impatient, chain-smoking, mobile-savy, loud. Three wearily tutors only occasionally admonish them.
Then, finally, 22 men appear on the pitch and it gets silent on the tribunes. Abdellatif, who had just hustled his seatmate, whispers deeply moved: “There he is!” and he is talking about a slender, almost bald man with green eyes and the sharp facial structure of a monk: Zinédine Zidane. He walks straightway up to the tribunes and the boys can hardly believe it. “Zizou!” they yell. He looks up briefly, not bored but distracted and lifts his hand as a greeting. Then he bends down to six heavily disabled children who silently sit on the sideline rage in wheelchairs, enwrapped in blankets. His serious facial expression changes, Zidane’s smile is enchanting, irresistible. He asks them if they are really warm enough, most of them aren’t able to answer. Afterwards he writes them autographs and presses them into their hands that are trembling from spasms. Before he begins with the training he waves them and wishes a good homeward journey.
The boys above, the cool ones, the steady guys, kept everything on picture with their mobiles. Now they have pictures of Zidane with children who have drool running from their mouths. But they are truly happy about it and that makes the magic of this man. “Zizou, c’est Dieu”, says Abdellatif, “Zidane is God.”
“I am normal”, says the deified, he always says that when one asks him about his status as France’s national treasure. And then he mostly says nothing more. He however seems to be the only one to think that. Who goes on a journey to the planet Zidane doesn’t hear a single dissonant voice in the chorus of admiration, adoration, adulation and also of love.
Of course, in his best moments Zidane plays soccer like a bird flies, so wonderfully gentle that his former coach Amié Jacquet almost tears up when he only thinks about it. He is of martial elegance, his tricks, his pirouettes, his dribbling, his deceptions aren’t just demonstrations, they are also perfect attacks. Zidane’s passes are equal to gifts, he doesn’t just stand on the pitch, he seems to hover above it at the same time. And when he sees a chance for a goal, he does things that ensure that his opponents wedge into each other or tumble into their own goalkeeper - like they had been jinxed.
But Zidane is also loved because he is so humble. And so not sparkish. And so shy. And always willing to help. And so fundamentally good. There’s something about him that turns even the most unemotional people into gushers.
Marcello Lippi, who coached him so hard at Juventus that Zidane sometimes had to throw up out of exhaustion, and the oppressed is even thankful for that – “it was the only way for me to cross lines I had shied away from before” – says with a breathy voice about his former alumnus: “It’s impossible to know him and not directly feel the need to help him, to protect him, to love him.”
There is no parting of the ways regarding him, people support him like they support liberty, equality and fraternity. “He should make you puke, actually”, says a journalist that knows him well. “But you don’t puke because you can’t help but love him.”
“The extraterrestrial”, how Aimé Jacquet calls him, was born In Marseille nearly 34 years ago, as stepchild of a nation whose living memorial he has become by now. In the south, on the other side of the Mediterranean lies Algeria, the homeland of his parents, Berbers from a village situated in the so called “Petite Kabylie” east of Algier.
“We were seven. Five sisters and two brothers. To get to school I had to walk two hours across the mountains and in winter I had to cross a stone-cold river.”, the today 70 year old Smail once told. “Just therefore I soon started working as a day labourer, from 5 am until 10 pm. One day I decided to move to France. That wasn’t a dream for me but a necessity.”
On a winter’s day in the year of 1953 the barely 18 year old Smail arrived in Paris. “I had left everything I loved behind – my parents, my siblings, my village, my country. I was utterly torn.” At first he sleeps outside, on the building lot he works in, not far away from today’s “Stade de France”, the place where his son, in 1998, will put an entire nation into a flush of happiness. Later he shares a tiny room with four friends.
“1962 Algeria became independent and I wanted to go back. But in Marseille, where I wanted to take the ferry, I met Malika. We married and stayed, forever.”
They couple has five children. The youngest is born on July 23, 1972, a little boy named Zinédine that everybody just calls Yazid. The family lives in a four room apartment in the Cité de la Castellane, a commuter town in the poor North of Marseille. A place where graffiti are numerous and trees are rare. Back then same as today most people come from Maghreb, Mali or Senegal. Teens that are out for trouble linger in the doorways and have nothing to lose besides time. Their little brothers play soccer on the “Place de la Tartane”, immured in concrete buildings, and the homesick elders are worn out and tired from the never ending fight against social decline.
At the Zidanes however no time shall be lost. “Work, seriousness and respect, that’s what our father taught us.” Says Zidane. “And he’s right because with this you get very, very far in life” To nurture his family Smail worked in a factory during the day and watched a supermarket at night. He only had one afternoon off a week, “but instead of relaxing he took us on trips, to the beach or to the city. He never said I love you or something like that, but gestures are bigger than words. For instance he always cut my hair, and he did it so carefully, so that I’d look good. The money he saved with that he gave to me.”
Zidane’s parents are his heroes. “They saved us from all the bad influences that surrounded us. Without them I am nothing. It’s thanks to them that each of us has a job and didn’t hit rock bottom.”
Not to hit rock bottom. That was the most important goal for the Zidanes. Because the drop into nothingness, into lethargy, into addiction, into too early and too many pregnancies is ever-present in the Cité. Lila, Zinédine’s only sister, studied and became an English teacher. A little miracle. His brothers’ jobs aren’t spectacular but at least they got some: Djamel, the oldest, is employee of La Castellane’s public pool. Farid and Nordine are social workers, who also work for the company “Zidane Diffusion” that is responsible Zinédine’s marketing. And if Yazid hadn’t been able to play soccer surprisingly well he would have liked to become a truck driver, a humble but realistic goal.
“We had no dreams when we were kids.” He once said. “We lived in our borough and what we saw on television was out of reach, another world. We had no reason to wish for something. We didn’t dream of things we didn’t have, or of being someone who we weren’t.”
The Zidane brothers are average at school and good at soccer and judo, especially Farid and Zinédine. Farid gives up the former and later becomes second in the Algerian Military Judo Championship, Zinédine gives up the latter and becomes the best soccer player of the world. On the “Place de la Tartane” “I wasn’t the only good one”, he says. “But I was the only one who was never able to stop.” He kicked for hours and if his brothers didn’t let him play with them he would cry miserably. Djamel, who shared a room with him, remembers: “He often slept with a ball in his arms, it was his alternative to a teddy-bear. Over my bed hang a sunset, over his hang a poster of Enzo Francescoli.” The striker from Uruguay played for Olympique Marseille back then and was Zidane’s idol. Even later he still admires him so much that he names his first son after him. Zidane, the agnostic – “I only believe in what I see with my own eyes” – says about the discrete Francescoli: “He is the only one I would have gotten on my knees for.”
Although back then it was impossible for him to imagine that he would ever become like his hero, of course not, even as a little boy he lacked the pomposity for that. “I never projected my thoughts into another world. I always stand with my feet firmly on the ground. Only when I know that I can do something, I start imagining things.”
Because of his talent he ascends, first from the degradations of his neighborhood club AS Foresta to US Saint Henry and later to Sports Olympiques de Septèmes. When he’s 13 he is allowed to go to a trainings camp of the French pupils’ selection in Aix-en-Provence. There he is found by Jean Varraud, who peeks talents for AS Cannes. He sees a shy boy who says almost nothing but that wasn’t necessary because “He spoke with the ball” like Varraud put it.
Much later, in 1994, his phone rings at night. It’s Zidane who just had his first international cap, France versus the Czech Republic. He was sent on in the 63rd minute and scored twice, once with his left foot and once with his head. “Do you remember me? My left foot and heading have always been my weaknesses. I worked, didn’t I?”
Varraud arranges the little Zidane’s move to Cannes, so that he can visit the local soccer school and makes sure he stays at a host family. His parents let their son go with a heavy heart. He doesn’t tell them that he weeps bitterly every night because of his homesickness and that he bursts into tears on the train back after each visit to Marseille. He never thinks about running away though. “I liked the ball more than school, so I had to live with the consequences. I owed my parents seriousness, at least in one area.”
He doesn’t go to the beach, he doesn’t go to the disco, he doesn’t flirt with girls, he practices. He works on his body and his character. Since the kind Zidane who has never said something bad about anyone outside of the pitch and doesn’t say much in general – “Preferably I would only talk to people I don’t know every two months or so.” – loses it too often. After he gave a black eye to defender and was banned for four matches, his headmaster Guy Lacombe takes him aside. “If you play the avenger you will watch soccer from the substitutes' bench. Do you want that?”He advises him, not seriously, to scrub the changing room to cool down. The next day he sees his pupil with a mob and a bucket. Zidane decrees himself to this daily gesture of humility for a month.
It didn’t really help though. He has received 13 red cards in his career so far. But his fouls get received like the Holy Communion. Marcel Dersailly, a former player for the NT, received a black eye and a laceration during his first encounter with Zidane and still says: “I think highly of him and respect him.”And the Saudi Arabian player Fuad Amin who got kicked by Zidane during the 1998 WC still feels guilty because his idol was banned for two matches afterwards.
Zidane isn’t yet 17 when he gets to play his first game as a professional for Cannes. He buys a Levi’s 501 from the money, the rest he gives to his parents. “I was so proud!” Two years later he scores for the first time and receives a Renault Clio as a present. 1992 he leaves for Girondins Bordeaux.
There’s now a young, humble woman on his side, who grew up in a tiny village next to Rodez in the South of France: Veronique, who is even shier than him. The two of them met in a Café in Cannes, “it was love on first sight”, she said in the only interview she has ever given. For him she leaves dancing school, she never regretted it. “He is the best husband and the best father” Zidane is 22 when Enzo is born. “It was my dream to become a father since I was 18, it’s the moment you become a man. There’s nothing better than this feeling. It’s the real life.”
Veronique accompanies him from Bordeaux to Turin and later from Turin to Madrid. Meanwhile Enzo has three brothers: Luca, Théo and the four month old Elyaz. The Zidanes are the counterpart to the baroque Beckhams. No gossip, no affairs, no shopping sprees, no night clubs, no lifestyle. Instead: French comedies on DVD, a dad who blow-dries his sons’ hair and tells them about his childhood before they go to bed – “Work, seriousness and respect” – as well as Barbecues in the villa’s garden, that no journalist was ever allowed to enter. And, at least, a Porsche Cayenne.
Zidane earns 14 million Euros a year, it could be twice as much, but money isn’t the engine of his life. He bought a house in Marseille for his parents and built one in Madrid for himself, that’s enough. He has a manager and a lawyer who negotiate his contracts, he has his two brothers who take care of his marketing. Of course he ascended but he never forgot that he could be the guy who each morning delivers vegetables to the supermarket round the corner. When the family goes on holiday, for instance to Mauritius, his brothers come with them and also Malek Kourane, a garbage man from Marseille and Zidane’s oldest friend. He says about him: “Yaz has a gigantic heart. He has experienced the craziest things, but he thinks he’s just doing his work like his father did his own.”
Life, so it seems, is like a long, calm river to Zidane. If there wouldn’t be soccer. And the love he receives from his fellow-countryman since he scored his two goals in the World Cup final against Brazil. Later his face illuminated the Arc de Triomphe, “Merci Zizou” was written above it in laser letters. One million people danced on the Champs Elysée. 60 million French are addicted to him since then.
Not even Jean-Marie Le Pen, tribune of the plebs in the outermost right wing of France, who loves to voice his disgust for the “Nigger brigade” that is the French national team, dared to say something against the great silent man. He, who tortured Algerian soldiers during France’s war against Algeria, once called Zidane a son of “French-Algeria”. That’s supposed to be a compliment: Zidane isn’t a Nigger. Zidane countered this with his up to now only political commitment. He will “most definitively not vote for Le Pen.” he assured the Nation during 2002’s presidential election.
Zidane isn’t only an idol, he’s supposed to heal the country from its ghettos and the revolt that is developing there. But he, who engages himself for children suffering from the genetic disease Leukodystrophy as well as for the development aid organization of the United Nations and alphabetization in Third World countries, refuses to play the role of a national therapist. Some people hold this against him, Jamel Debouzze, a comedian of Moroccan descent, thinks: “Someone who comes from La Castellane isn’t supposed to quote Kant. It’s not his job to give speeches. He scored two goals in a World Cup final, that was a political act.” And for Fabrice Jouhaud, former journalist for the sports’ magazine “L’Equipe” and today head of a Journalist school in Paris, Zidane’s reservation is “a sign of intelligence. He isn’t megalomaniac and he knows his limits. He doesn’t feel obliged to have an opinion about everything. When he doesn’t know an answer to a question, he simply says: I don’t know. To publicly admit that you don’t know something is a quality.”
He also thinks it was correct that Zidane left the French NT in 2004. “It was falling to pieces in front of his eyes.” The triumphs in the World Cup and the Europeans Championship were followed by a downfall in Korea in 2002 and an inglorious elimination at the EC in Portugal.
The players fight. Zidane, the Sphinx, remains silent. With Raymond Domenech, the new coach who is now supposed to save “Les Bleus”, he doesn’t really get along. He wants to finish “the grief about the past” as soon as possible and makes no secret of the fact that for him Zidane is part of it. “What I think about him isn’t important” Zidane says only and announces his retirement from the NT in the summer of 2004, deeply hurt. But somehow the Bleus can’t be without Zidane and Zidane can’t be without them. He finishes a wan season with Real Madrid and the National team, bewildered and uninspired, doesn’t manage to score a single goal against the soccer dwarf Israel. The qualification for the WC is in danger. And when international games are on the schedule, Zidane is left behind alone in Madrid, while his colleagues, the “Galacticos” fight for their countries. He sits behind his TV dejectedly and watches the demise of his team. He hears how the fans chant his name. He feels a yearning. “The Bleus are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me” he sounds from afar. He wants to give it another shot. He however is in the same situation as “Napoleon on Elba”, how a magazine wrote, “He cannot return to France alone.”
So he, the nice guy, stages a revolt, together with Lilian Thurman, Patrick Viera and Claude Makélélé, all of them players that Domenech didn’t want anymore. The conspirators meet in a Parisian hotel in the past summer (of 2005), then they announce their return to the coach. Since then Domenech is doomed to the role of an escort and France sighs with relief. Since then the team surrounding Zidane has only lost a single game against Slovakia, it seems like he is a living talisman. “I need the team more than the other way round.”, he says and that may even be true. He will celebrate his 34th birthday during the World Cup and longs for a graceful departure. From les Bleus, from soccer.
“You will play and we will triumph” one of his disciples wrote to him. And after his retirement? “Then the best years of our life will follow”, says his wife Veronique Zidane. Zidane remains silent, like always. What did it say again in the TV ad for the Ford company that shows him for a minute in silence? “It’s only important what you do, not what you say.”