Zizou - Forever the Phantom of the World Cup

On the eve of the World Cup Final, The Sunday Times profiled Zinedine Zidane, the man with "the grace of a dancer and the grimace of a serial killer".

In a piece that knowingly mythologises the man and his place in the game, the closing sentence anticipated drama of the highest calibre, insisting: "Zidane's last match is a date with destiny, inviting a surprise ending which the gods of football may be unable to resist."

We all know what happened next. We witnessed two moments two hours apart; one of singular beauty and the other of hot-blooded savagery and both from one man. Their name may be on the trophy, but the enduring memories of the 2006 World Cup Final will not be of the Italians' triumph, but Zidane's tragedy.

If Zidane's penalty to give France the lead was a thing of delicacy and massive bravery, then it was also indicative of a man living on the edge. His penalty beggared belief, not only because at first glance we couldn't be sure whether or not it had crossed the line, but secondly and more significantly, because Zidane had just executed the sublime. Not on the training pitch, or against a lowly Primera League side or in an international friendly. Zidane mocked Gianluigi Buffon, the best goalkeeper in the world, with an extraordinary chip onto the underside of the bar. He did this in his last professional game and with the whole planet watching him in the World Cup Final.

Twenty minutes into extra time and the sun having set on Berlin, those football gods, evidently in a 'dark-malt lager-dunkel let's do something crazy' kind of mood, swooped in from above to inform Zidane that his time had come. The chosen antagonist, Marco Materazzi, having given away the penalty at one end and scored with his head at the other, played the last card and provoked Zidane, with a subtle nipple-grapple and a filthy insult, into head-butt charging him to the floor, just like a rhinoceros would.

But the referee didn't see it, so we experienced those agonising, sensational minutes when it looked like somehow Zidane would get away with it and stay on the pitch. The Frenchman's irreverent poker face bore all the contrition of the devil. Italian children in Rome clung to their gasping mothers, fearing that the maestro was about to stealthily hijack the World Cup in Berlin and inhabit their nightmares from afar thereafter.

Whether or not the dismissal came because the fourth official saw a replay, the decision was correct. Red it was, and Zidane walked from the pitch in utter disgrace. FIFA did their best to flag their fair play message across the globe throughout the tournament, but little did they know how cynically it would be hoodwinked by the Portuguese, nor how violently it would be rebuked by Daniele de Rossi, Luis Figo and at the final hour, in the greatest drama, by Zidane himself. It is foolish to eulogise savagery , but blind to ignore the powers of poetry and pathos that lay siege to the annals of this great game. French daily L'Equipe mourned:

"During the match in Berlin's Olympiastadion where so many pages of sports history were written, you were Ali, the genius of the ring, the greatest. But not Ali, nor (Jesse) Owens nor Pele, men that you were about to join among the most brilliant sporting legends, ever broke the rules the way you (Zidane) did."

The fireworks and confetti and Azzurri joy blasted in to the Berlin sky, but for all their endeavour and ability and merit, the Italians had already been upstaged by the Berber from the Kabylie region of northwest Algeria known as 'Zizou'. If Diego Maradona became an Argentine deity in 1986, then Zinedine Zidane, through grace and unforgivable violence, has just become the Phantom of the Opera, destined to forever stalk the catacombs of chaos and argument. What a player.