About the "headbutt heard round the world"

It must be so hard being a role model.

It must even be harder living up to the expectation of being a role model without knowing that in your every day life/work thT you have been chosen as a role model.

I must be one of the very few people in this world who totally understands and respects (and thinks it is somewhat cool) what Zidane did at the World Cup on Sunday.

Soccer is a very passionate game. As a matter of fact, the passion is what I love about it. It's about the only game I know that grown men cry, in full glare, not even ashamed to show that they are crushed and are literally weeping and wailing. So with all that passion, when something like a curse word aimed at the wrong person is thrown in it, it must be so infuriating.

I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to bash people's heads in, *most recently the douche bag I now work for* for saying the wrong things, doing the wrong things, but you keep it all inside, and it just consumes you, and it gives the provoker the impression that it is alright to infuriate you, that "I can do this and get away with it," sometimes being civilized, makes you lose face and not confront the wrongdoing, or warn the wrongdoing, that you know what "you can no longer do this. It is unacceptable." I like what he did, I admire what he did.

I was a little bit of a fan before, but now I am an even bigger fan, and everything he said in his apology is just about the way I would have phrased it, "I do not regret what I did."


I have also culled pieces from blogs that I agree with.

Given a reprieve, Zizou picked up his squad by the scruff of the neck and spurred them by example. Angry passion has always been a critical factor in Zidane's game-as he has mellowed during his advancing years, his play has gone south as well. Zidane was able to summon his fire once more in Germany. This was Zizou in full-you can't take the genius in the midfield without also taking the occasional bout of anger. If it cost his team the World Cup, well, they wouldn't have been in that position anyway.

NYU doctoral candidate Asad Raza at 3 Quarks Daily provides an explanation for shocked U.S. fans: "It may have clarified his priority for pride and honor over winning. This is equally unfamiliar in the U.S., where sports are so heavily corporate that there is little tolerance for figures who do not, like Michael Jordan, always place the game above all else."