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London - If you were among the billion or so viewers watching the soccer World Cup final on Sunday, chances are you were struck more by the ignominious end to Frenchman Zinedine Zidane’s career rather than the game itself.

In the 110th minute of France’s defeat by Italy, Zidane, the balding Marseille-born genius commonly held up as the greatest soccer player of his generation, committed a terrible faux pas. After earlier becoming one of only four players to achieve the feat of scoring in two different World Cup final matches–he scored twice in the 1998 World Cup final–"Zizou" dropped his head and charged at Italy’s Marco Materazzi like a fighting bull after the two players exchanged words on the field.

The French captain was duly handed the red card in the ensuing melee, meaning that his team lost an expert spot-kicker for the ensuing penalty kick shootout and his own glittering career ended with a whimper rather than the victory roar many analysts had scripted for the elegant midfielder.

Zidane, who had come out of retirement from international competition to help the French national team at the World Cup, was forced to take a walk of shame back to the dressing-room past the prize–the solid gold trophy itself. The misery was compounded when France went on to lose 5-3 on penalties.

The consensus during and after the game was that Zidane had received his just desserts; commentators howled with outrage after watching slow-motion replays of the ugly incident, most of the player’s own teammates refused to answer questions afterwards, and French fans gave their hero short shrift. "It’s his own fault. So he has to assume responsibility and it’s a shame, it’s a pity for the team, because that really was a knockout for the French team and that was a moral knockout," one was quoted as saying.

France’s President Jacques Chirac was characteristically philosophical on the off-the-ball clash: "I don’t know what happened, why Zidane was punished. But I would like to express all the respect that I have for a man who represents at the same time all the most beautiful values of sport, the greatest human qualities one can imagine, and who has honored French sport and, simply, France."

There was some consolation for Zidane, who one British pundit called "the loneliest man in the world"; the disgraced athlete, who ranks third on out list of the World’s 20 Best Paid Soccer Players, was selected by journalists as the best player in the 2006 World Cup

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/