El último post de Jeff Wells en su blog Rigourous Intuition habla de acerca de los amigos imaginarios de los chicos y de qué puede significar este fenómeno.
Hoy el New York Times, anticipando la final del mundial, publica un perfil del maravilloso jugador francés y capitán de la selección de su país, Zinadine Zidane.
Esto es lo extraño y el motivo de mencionarlo en conjunto con el post del excéntrico pero sumamente inteligente de Wells: Zidane había abandonado la selección después de la derrota súbita en la primera rueda del mundial del 2002. Dijo basta. Pero volvió.
¿Por qué?
Reporta el New York Times:
Un año más tarde, en Agosto del 2005, volvió con una explicación exótica por su retorno. Le dijo a la revista France Football: “Una noche a las tres de la mañana súbitamente me desperté y hablé con alguien. Pero nadie sabe de esto. Ni siquiera mi mujer.
Lo que le sucedió fue “místico y hasta se me escapa a mí un poco.” dijo Zidane. Juró no identificar esta voz convincente prometiendo: “Hasta mi último suspiro no lo diré. Es demasiado intenso.”
Agregó que se sintió empujado por una fuerza irresistible, diciendo, “Tuve que obedecer esta voz que me aconsejaba. Es un enigma, pero no intentes buscar una explicación. Nunca la encontrarás. Probablemente nunca conocerás a esta persona. Hasta yo no puedo explicar esta reunión.”
Después, cuenta la nota, presionado por los medios que lo ridiculizaban, Zinadine confesó que la voz fue de su hermano. No le creo. Quisiera creer que fue un encuentro de otro tipo.
Foto: Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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July 9, 2006
France's Aging Magician Conjures a Final Trick
By JERE LONGMAN
BERLIN, July 8 — His shaved head glistening, sweat beading off his chin, the French midfielder Zinédine Zidane set up for a penalty kick in the World Cup semifinals with revived and direct intent.
The Portuguese goalkeeper knew exactly where the shot was going, but he could only dive helplessly as the kick rocketed inside the left goal post. That goal in Wednesday's game proved decisive in a 1-0 victory that put France in the World Cup final against Italy here Sunday and illustrated Zidane's masterly assurance and control at age 34, even as he plans to retire after the championship match.
With a victory, France would secure its second World Cup title in eight years and Zidane would cement his position as perhaps soccer's greatest player of the last 20 years. He is a modest man who summons an elegant flamboyance on the field. Yet his performance here has been as improbable as it has been rejuvenating, and he has led what France's coach, Raymond Domenech, affectionately calls "a little team of old men" to the brink of a title.
For the French to win, Zidane will have to lead a successful attack against an Italian team that has displayed an impenetrable defense, allowing one goal — a ball kicked into its own net in a match against the United States — so far in the tournament.
"It's amazing that someone 34 is still able to do such incredible things on the pitch," the French defender Willy Sagnol said of Zidane. "He is a natural leader. It is a pleasure to follow in his footsteps."
Another teammate, Lilian Thuram, said, "It is others who should be stopping, not him."
Zidane did stop once already. He had no intention of participating in this tournament, leaving France's national team in 2004, two years after it embarrassingly exited the 2002 World Cup in the first round without scoring. He was coaxed to return by a coach seeking one last flicker of greatness, and by what Zinédine Zidane (pronounced ZIN-ay-deen zee-DAHN) has described as an eerie nighttime visit from a mystical figure, all very French and inexplicable.
His comeback was alternately welcomed, met with skepticism, then disparaged by many fans and by the French news media. Zidane appeared slow and old as France failed to win its first two matches of this World Cup, and he was disqualified from the third match after receiving two yellow-card warnings for excessive fouls.
The son of Algerian émigrés, Zidane was even accused of mumbling "La Marseillaise," France's national anthem, by the far-right politician, Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the anti-immigration National Front, who has complained that there are too many members of minority groups on the World Cup team.
"We are proud to represent this country," Thuram told reporters in rebuke of Le Pen. "So vive la France, but the true France. Not the France that he wants."
The criticisms have since stopped as Zidane has resuscitated France and his own image with a determined will and a wizardry that makes the ball seem as if it is tethered to a string, like a yo-yo. He grew up playing street soccer in a housing project in Marseille and lived, it is said, in an apartment so cramped that his family had to eat in shifts. If so, this may help to explain why the 6-foot-1, 172-pound Zidane is such a magician in tight, impossible spaces.
In the World Cup quarterfinals against flamboyant and skillful Brazil, Zidane made the ball do tricks as if it were a pet. He was more Brazilian than the Brazilians themselves. Juggling off his thigh. Spinning 360 degrees at a full sprint. Flicking the ball over the head of Ronaldo, a Brazilian forward, to start a play that culminated with Zidane's free kick and a volley by Thierry Henry that provided the game's lone goal.
"A player like Zidane can be 30, 40, 50 years old, and he will always know what to do with the ball at his feet," the Brazilian defender Roberto Carlos said.
Pelé, the Brazilian considered by many the greatest player in the history of the game, refers to Zidane as Maestro. Michel Platini, a former French star, told Agence France-Presse, "I think he is the king of what's fundamental in the game: control and passing."
With this remark, Platini struck upon something essential in Zidane's appeal — individuality in service of the team. This has become a rallying point for France's aging squad.
"Our slogan is, 'We will live or die together,' " Zidane said after France's semifinal victory.
Two years ago, it seemed that his international career had been forever interred. Zidane retired from France's national team in August 2004. Six years earlier, he had scored two goals in the World Cup final against Brazil, and France's 3-0 victory outside Paris had touched off the largest celebration on the Champs-Élysées since World War II ended. Zidane's likeness was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe.
But he was tired and injured at the 2002 World Cup, playing with a wrap around his thigh and a figurative tourniquet around his seemingly withered talent. Then France exited meekly in the quarterfinals of the 2004 European Championships. That was it. Zidane was done with the national team.
"You have to stop one day," he said in a statement.
A year later, in August 2005, he came back, with an exotic explanation for his return. He told the magazine France Football: "One night at 3 in the morning, I suddenly woke up and I spoke with someone. But no one knows about it, not even my wife."
What happened to him was "mystical, and even escapes me a bit," Zidane said. He vowed not to identify this convincing voice, promising: "Until my last breath, I won't say. It's too intense."
He added that he felt pushed by an irrepressible force, saying: "I had to obey this voice that was advising me. It's an enigma, but don't try to find an explanation. You will never find it. You will probably never meet this person. Even I cannot explain this meeting."
After the snickering class began to wonder about this disembodied voice and whether it belonged to a deity, President Jacques Chirac of France or to Zidane's corporate sponsors, he offered a clarification. The visitor had been real enough, he said. It was his brother.
Whatever the motivation for his return, Zidane's eccentric account did provide at least a hint of the unbound way he plays soccer.
In the recent documentary "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait," he became mystical again as he said: "The game, the event, is not necessarily experienced or remembered in real time. I remember playing in another place, at another time, when something amazing happened. Someone passed the ball to me, and before even touching it, I knew what was going to happen. I knew I was going to score. It was the first and last time it ever happened."
Whatever the outcome of Sunday's final, Zidane's place in soccer is secure. So is his place in French culture, where he, as a married father, is perceived to represent family values, a fondness for effort, a willingness to take responsibility and general decency.
"In a country like France, where people are often considered as arrogant and proud and sermonizers, he's an example of discretion and shyness," said Elie Cohen, research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research and, like almost all French intellectuals, a fan of the team.
Real life, though, does not always come tied in the same neat bow as sports.
In 1998, France's victory, achieved with an ethnically diverse team, became a symbol of multiculturalism and a repudiation of Le Pen's anti-immigrant stance. In France's 2002 presidential elections, Zidane urged voters to cast their ballots for the incumbent, Chirac, derisively referring to his opponent, Le Pen, as "the other one."
Yet the jubilant, inclusive promise of 1998 has met a less sanguine reality. In 2001, supporters of Algeria booed the French national anthem before an exhibition match with France outside Paris, then halted the game with 10 minutes remaining by running onto the field. Riots last fall by French-Arab and French-African youths underscored the alienation from jobs and opportunity felt by immigrants and the failure to integrate them into French society.
"The '98 victory has shown that there is space for everyone in France, and that for those who think immigration is inconvenient, they're wrong, because France's success is due to immigration's contributions," said Pascal Boniface, director of France's Institute for International and Strategic Relations, and author of a book on soccer and globalism.
"Unfortunately, soccer, instead of being a steppingstone to allow integration, it has become ghettoized. Black people and Arabs are much more able to succeed in football or sport in general than in politics and the economy. We should get our inspiration from soccer rather than considering it as a space for the achievement of minorities."
Even a magician like Zidane can only do so much to sustain optimism and conviviality in a troubled nation, social experts said.
"The final will be a great moment of communion and shared happiness, but we'll never wipe out France's real problems like the suburb riots only with Zidane's image," Cohen said.
Even if, by Sunday night, it is again beaming from the Arc de Triomphe.
Maia de la Baume contributed reporting from Paris for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/sports/soccer/09zidane.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=8a622c44077a38fb&hp=&ex=1152417600&adxnnl=0&oref=login&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1152417727-VPaHgTEsHnFcDYJiajLLmg&pagewanted=print
o por ahí fue un encuentro con otro tipo...
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