Zidane now playing the shame game for France

SANDTON, South Africa – There is nothing in sports quite like the big press conference; that moment when news is humming and the figure of the moment comes walking toward a stage as the light bulbs flash and the sound of 100 cameras clicks at once.

On Monday morning, France’s soccer team was imploding and so it happened that its greatest star Zinedine Zidane was scheduled to appear at an Adidas press conference to promote Tuesday’s match between France and South Africa. Back a few days ago, when the press conference was first announced, few in the media gave it much thought. It sounded much like the typical marketing promotion journalists erase from their BlackBerry mailboxes.

(Dominic Barnardt/Getty Images)

That is until Sunday, when there was a mutiny on the French team after coach Raymond Domenech kicked striker Nicolas Anelka off the team for cursing at him. This led to an awkward scene where the French players sat in their bus and refused to come out to the field for an afternoon training, leaving Domenech to read a statement from them declaring their frustration with him.

And suddenly Zidane’s press conference was the biggest news of the World Cup.

Of course looking at Zidane to stand over France’s descent into soccer chaos is ironic given that it was his head butt of Italy’s Marco Materazzi in his last game – the final of the 2006 World Cup – that got him ejected and might have cost France the championship. The French have struggled since, making this World Cup only after star Theirry Henry set up a winning goal against Ireland by hitting the ball with his hand. Twice.

With Zidane suddenly in demand, Adidas didn’t know what to do with the flood of reporters who poured into the makeshift interview area set up in the Sandton Convention Center. It brought former South African star Lucas Radabe to sit beside Zidane and even placed one of its controversial World Cup balls “Jabulani” on the table before the players in the misguided belief that its presence might mean the questions would be about soccer and maybe even Adidas’s shoes.

Hardly a chance. After a hostess asked a few innocuous questions about how the two players felt about the World Cup and South Africa and the reporters painfully waited for the answers to be translated from Zindane’s French to English, questions were opened to the 500 or so media members crammed into the room.

Zidane’s smiled dropped.

“I hoped that when this started it would be a pleasant press conference,” he said in French, through an interpreter. “But that is not the case.”

He sighed.

“I would say that, yes, I am very sad,” the great Zidane said. “I was part of that team; I was a player for the French team. What makes me sad is that we are talking about everything but soccer. France has not exploded (imploded). I don’t agree with that thought. We still have hope. I think the thing for everyone to forget about these issues is for France to win.”

Once it was a given the French would beat South Africa on Tuesday. But that was before Anelka reportedly screamed “go screw yourself, dirty son of a whore” to his coach, was kicked off the team and the incident was repeated to the media forcing the French to charge that a “traitor” was in their midst.

Now no one knows how France will look against Bafana Bafana or if it will even show up.

“I don’t agree with what has happened,” Zidane said. “Not what was said but what has happened. What was said in the dressing room should not have been leaked to the press. What was done is done. Concerning the players, they should have attended the training. I don’t agree with the decision not to go onto the pitch.”

He shook his head.

“This World Cup will be remembered for two things: the winner and that the French team refused to attend the training session before the South Africa game.”

A woman asked Zidane if he knew who this so-called traitor was.

“I don’t have any idea,” he replied. “Do you know it?”

The woman shook her head.

“I’m not part of the team anymore,” Zidane said curtly.

After a few more questions including whether he would want to coach France (the answer: no), Zidane looked ready to leave. The hostess made an exaggerated neck slashing gesture to the other Adidas workers who seemed slow to pick up on her cue. She snatched the microphone away from a stunned Radabe, then motioned for Zidane to quickly finish his last answer.

“Maybe things that happen now they deserve it,” Zidane said of the French players through the interpreter. “Either they go through or they lose and go back home. What we do know is that when we go home all is not lost. We will have a new coach and life will go on.”

Then Zidane was gone. Or at least he tried to go. A sea of cameras descended on him as he departed the stage. He pushed through but the mob kept surrounding him. At one point it looked like he snapped at a cameraman before he moved out of the makeshift press conference room, through a hallway and at last out the door as an Adidas worker stopped the men with cameras and Zidane suddenly the news of the World Cup again ducked safely out the door.