As millions of fans watched around the world yesterday one of France’s most renowned players did something no one expected. He headbutted an opposing player (pictured here after the offense against Marco Materazzi).

What?!? I have a daughter and son who play high level soccer and a husband and son who watched the FIFA World Cup as much as the next soccer obsessed American, but head butting?

Zinedine Zidane just turned 34 years old and recently announced that he is going to be retiring from soccer (football to the rest of the world) after this World Cup. He is one of the best midfielders to ever play the game with elegant dribbling, balance, passing ability, and one of the best penalty shots in the game. He was the first to score in the World Cup final match in the early minutes of the game off of a penalty kick. Zinedine has also won acclaim for using his head in a more smartly. He received international attention when he headed two goals in the 1998 world cup game against Brazil, where France went on to win the title. It was the first ever World Cup victory for France.

So in only the fourth World Cup game to go to penalty kicks why would one of France’s best hopes have engaged in such bad sportsmanship that he gets kicked out of the game? The media frenzy was off as soon as the red card was flashed. Although some media sources claim the head butt was provoked, I am forced to wonder what Materazzi could have said. Did he say Zidane had cooties? It seems that Materazzi’s words must have been as childish as his opponent’s actions. The New York Times observed that before the head butt “there was Marco Materazzi of Italy grabbing Zidane's shirt and holding him as they lumbered up the field — just your basic soccer grappling, boys being boys”

Zidane also has four sons of his own with wife Véronique Zidane. His four sons, Enzo, Luca, Theo, and Elyaz were no doubt watching as their father rammed his opponent. What lessons could they possibly be learning from this incident? That it is alright to be a bad sport as long as you are a star athlete?

How will people remember Zinedine Zidane? In 10 years will he be revered as one of the best athletes ever or that bald guy who head butted someone in the final World Cup game?

The kicker is this: even after getting a red card Zidane was awarded with the Golden Ball of the tournament which is given to the best player as voted by the media.

So much for messaging good sportsmanship to our kids....

Images from ESPN

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