A tribute to Zidane the greatest ever..

[General Duke]

 

In my opinion he is the best player to ever grace the game of football. Oh what joy to have watched the old master at work.

 

At the 1998 World Cup, Cesare Maldini, the manager of the Italian team, said: 'I would give up five players to have Zizou in my squad.' Footballers throughout the game seem to respect Zidane because while he is an individual who can do just about anything with a ball, he is also an out-and-out team player and one who does not freeze on the big occasion. In 1998 he was voted European and World Footballer of the Year. And he has improved since then. Zidane attributes much of his progress to playing in Italy. He singles out the influence of Piero Ventrone, the Juventus fitness trainer, for dramatically increasing his explosive power (the use of body-building drugs has put Juve under scrutiny by the football authorities in recent years).

 

Zidane dons UEFA's Jubilee crown

Thursday, 22 April 2004

Zinedine Zidane has been voted the No1 European footballer of the past 50 years, in UEFA's Jubilee poll to find the top 50 players of the last five decades.

 

Beckenbauer and Cruyff

Zidane, a FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship winner with France, as well as a UEFA Champions League winner with Real Madrid CF, polled 123,582 votes. Franz Beckenbauer was second on 122,569 and Johan Cruyff third with 119,332 votes.

 

source

[General Duke]

WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT ZIDANE

 

Zidane's mastery of his art has drawn plaudits from all corners of the globe - especially after his age-defying display against Brazil in Frankfurt on Saturday.

 

Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira was the first to pay tribute to the great Zidane, labelling him "a monster" for his performance.

 

French legend Michel Platini believes Zidane is one of the most skilful players the game has ever known.

 

"Technically, I think he is the king of what's fundamental in the game - control and passing. I don't think anyone can match him when it comes to controlling or receiving the ball," said Platini.

 

German icon Franz Beckenbauer added: "Zidane is one of the greatest players in history, a truly magnificent player."

 

Pele, a World Cup winner three times with Brazil, hailed the Frenchman after seeing his country go out: "Zidane was the magician in the game."

 

Last word goes to Italy manager Marcello Lippi, who will have to stop one of his favourite sons - he coached Zidane at Juve - if his country is to win the final on Sunday.

 

"I think Zidane is the greatest talent we've known in football these last 20 years, yet he never played the prima donna," said Lippi. "I am honoured to have been his manager."

[General Duke]

BETTER THAN PLATINI & AN EQUAL TO MARADONA

There is a debate in France as to who is the best ever French player - Michel Platini or Zidane.

 

When I was growing up Platini was my idol, but for me Zidane is the best ever French player.

 

I say that because he has won more trophies than Platini at international level - Zidane had that consistency.

 

Zidane is one of the best technical players I have ever seen along with Maradona.

 

I think he is on a par with Maradona, though I'm biased. An Argentine would say Maradona is above Zidane.

 

SOURCE

[General Duke]

Since the defeat by Italy and retirement the legend's reputation has steadily grown thanks to sites like youtube which has many dedicated fans putting together beautiful fotage of the one and only Zinedine Zidane, here are the top three.

 

1.

Best player Ever Zinedine Zidane

 

2.

 

3. Zidane

[General Duke]

For me Zidane represents all that is beautiful about the game. He played with such skill, concentration and belief that it inspired me.

I watched him play against titans and make it look so easy for Juventus, for Madrid and for Le blue. He was at the centre of everything a man who was driven to success. A`champion, a legend even before the and icon in his native France, oh what joy to have watched the man in his prime.

[N.O.R.F]

Duke, for once we agree on something.

 

I have three Zizou shirts. One a Juve shirt and two are France 2002 and 2006.

 

Euro 2000 was the time i said to myself he is a great. He will sorely be missed.

[rudy-Diiriye]

sorry this homie has never impressed me! i mean when i compare to him like karim, pelee, ali etc.,he dont measure up!!

i just never understood why he falled for the italian player's trash talk in the middle of world championship game!

 

at this stage, he should have known this stuff.

[N.O.R.F]

Karim??

Ali??

[rudy-Diiriye]

i am talking about the greatest sports ppl so far

in this planet Northy, what u talking about? camel jockeys!!

[N.O.R.F]

looool, you mentioned Karim iyo Ali saxib. Just asking who they were.

 

No one can beat Mr ALi but we are talking football here. Too bad you know nothing about it,,,,,,

[General Duke]

^^^He mentioned Pele, who last played 37 years ago.

 

Northerner its a damn shame he did not win the world cup. After all in 2006 it was all about him, he destroyed Spain, Brazil and Portugal and is one of the few in the modern age to score in two finals.

[Malika]

Rudy, he is a mere human being..lets forgive him for being one...The dude is brilliant,ofcourse he cant be compared to Pele', the old man was an exceptional player!

[General Duke]

Zidane, Zinedine

 

Born 23 June 1972, to an immigrant proletarian Algerian family in Marseilles, Zidane (or "Zizou" as he is affectionately known to the French public) has risen to become not only the most important French footballer of the 1990s, but also a totemic cultural icon. Zidane was the man of the 1998 Coupe de Monde, scoring two magnificent goals in Les Bleus' 3-0 demolition of the Brazilians in the World Cup Final. That year he was also voted French Sportsman of the Year, FIFA World Player of the Year and European Footballer of the Year. All that in a Summer during which he'd already hauled his club team, Juventus of Turin, to their second successive Serie A Championship.

 

Zidane is, without any question, one of the most talented footballers of the last thirty years. He is physically strong, oddly graceful -- with a bizarrely balletic lumbering gait, and a deceptive change of pace and direction --, and blessed with a heady combination of a masterful footballing intelligence and prodigious gifts of imagination and intuition. Zidane's ability to read the game, and to telegraph pinpoint passes to the feet of team-mates, is legendary. The analytical verve and strange soulflulness of his game is amplified in its effect by his striking physical appearance: a tall, hard man, Zidane bears a marked resemblance to Mr. Spock of Star Trek, with his dark, steely eyebrows and impassive demeanour painting a picture of logical rigour and hidden inner depths. In addition, Zidane's "deceptive baldness" (Simon Hooper, 1998), whereby he appears standardly tonsured from the front, but is revealed, from the elevated perspective of the watching fan, or TV camera, to be in possession of a capacious bald patch, lends him something of the demeanour of a medieval monk. Thus, Zidane's physical instantiation of the odd archetypes of Dark Age Holy Man, Vulcan, Divine, and 23rd Century Scientist creates a heady impression of a man of strange learning, deep thought, powerful intellect, strong will and great skill.

 

Zidane's cultural (as opposed to purely footballing) significance is tied to his origins. He was born in the deprived and despised Marseilles housing projects which are home to so many of southern France's large Arab population. With the seemingly inexorable rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National in the 1970s and 80s, especially on France's Mediterranean coast, Zidane had to grow up as a member of a marginalised and distrusted group. Yet, throughout the Spring months of 1998, Marseilles was dominated by an enormous poster of Zidane, towering over the Vieux Port, and proclaiming the stirring message that 'La Victoire est en Nous'. Better still, within hours of the World Cup victory (on Bastille Day, no less), Zidane had the chance to see over a million people gathered on the Champs-Elysées, all chanting his name in delirious unison.

 

The role of Zidane was just part of the role played by the splendidly multi-ethnic French team in exploding traditional notions of Frenchness, and delivering an inclusive bliss-hit to late millennial France as well as a smashing blow to the politics of exclusion, fascism and reaction. In addition to the Algerian-French Zidane, the team could boast an Armenian Youri Djorkaeff, the battling West African Patrick Vieira, the commanding presence of Marcel Desailly at centre-back, and, in Lilian Thuram, a powerful French African who saved his nation's footballing hopes more than once, from right-back, with a set of wonderfully struck goals. France had, in addition, two Black strikers in Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet, a talented Black attacking midfield player, Christian Karembeu, and a Basque left-back, Biexente Lizarazu -- and even captain Didier Deschamps is half Savoyard. When this phenomenal band of Frenchmen won the greatest sporting event in the world on home soil, the little-France mentality of Le Pen and his ilk was savaged by a rampant wolf of ebullient footballing energy, producing a joyous national pride that owed nothing to the hate-filled fantasies of the Right, and everything to a cosmopolitan nationalism of the Left. It is no coincidence -- no coincidence at all -- that the triumph of these Mestizo-Frenchman took place just in advance of the satisfying implosion of the Front National, and the disastrous decline of the political fortunes of Le Pen himself.

 

Some Comrades Turtle (O'Neill and Sandbrook among them) found themselves, in that magic Summer of 1998, in the town of Montpelier in southern France. They write:

"We were playing football on the dusty pitch of a predominantly Arab housing project on the outskirts of the town with a group of delightfully skillful young kids. (Indeed, so skillful was one of these young lads, that he managed to score a goal from a corner, with his the inside of his left foot, having stepped over the ball and then spun around, sending it careering off with enough spin to bend it into the back of the net -- undoubtedly the finest footballing feat we'd ever seen). In our broken French, we discussed football with them (the level was basically "Quel bout!" and "J'adore Cantona"), and every one of them said he loved Zidane (and Djorkaeff), and that one day they, like he, would play for their country -- for France. Their little sisters, playing close by, all had their faces painted in the blue, white and red of the French tricolour, with the letters Z-Z scrawled on their foreheads and cheeks in mark of respect to their hero."

 

These young Europeans, living on the edge of a Mediterranean which has been the medium for fruitful trade, communication and exchange between Europe and North Africa for millennia, had found themselves finally pulled into a vision of Frenchness, and delivered of real hope for the liberty, equality and solidarity which that vision -- at its best -- promises. And all this had been accomplished through the alchemical offices of a young but wise Leonard Nimoy-lookalike, a proud Algerian-Frenchman, a visionary footballing master, who had once lived just as they did.

 

Our moral: Vive la Revolution! Vive Egalité! Vive Zizou! Allez les Bleus!

[General Duke]

Our moral: Vive la Revolution! Vive Egalité! Vive Zizou! Allez les Bleus!

 

World Champion

 

European Champion

 

Fifa player of the year 3 times

[General Duke]

 

Zidane movie

 

........................................................About the film.Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker Douglas Gordon teams up with French artist Philippe Parreno to create a work glorious in its simplicity.

 

The film was made by training 17 cameras, under the supervision of acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji, solely on footballer Zinédine Zidane over the course of a single match between Real Madrid and Villareal.

 

Zidane himself recounts, in voice-over, what he can and cannot remember from his matches. Magnificently edited and accompanied by a majestic score from Scottish rock heroes Mogwai, this is not only the greatest football movie ever made, but also one of the finest studies of man in the workplace, an ode to the loneliness of the athlete and the poise and resilience of the human body.

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