Zinedine Zidane is not a flopper or a whiner or a moaner. I have never seen him pull one of those scenes from the last act of La Boheme, enacting his death tableau on the field after the merest brush of contact. I haven't seen him lying there at death's door while they go through with the most ridiculous of all dramas, the entry of the stretcher.
Imagine if the NFL were like that. Half a dozen stretchers called for during the course of the game, whereupon the nearly deceased leaps off it, shakes off the very fingers of the Evil One and trots back onto the field. Maybe Zidane was tired of all this, of this travesty, which rewards all the things that we were once taught were cowardly, but can be used to great advantage in this game.
So Zidane slammed a guy. He lost it. Writers all over the world are competing with themselves to heap scorn on France's greatest player. You know something? I don't blame him for getting sore. Almost every time I could find him on the screen, he had someone tugging at his shirt, tripping him or messing with him in some sneaky way.
The problem is he doesn't hit the canvas as the rest of those prima donnas do. So the ref must figure nothing is happening. Sure, he should have held off on the head butt, but to put the defeat of his team on his shoulders is a reach....
You can read the rest of the piece here. Obviously, I agree with it.
