Violence in Sports

By now almost everyone with a TV has seen the image, at least once. With minutes left in extra time of the 2006 World Cup Championship soccer match featuring France against Italy, French national hero and international superstar Zinedine Zidane was walking down the field during a momentary lull in the action. Marco Matterazzi strode along several paces behind. Suddenly Zidane whirled around and marched up to the Italian. Without warning he delivered a head-butt to Matterazzi's sternum. The Italian went down hard. Zidane was given a red card--ejected from his final match, having vowed to retire after the World Cup.

He left the field in tears trudging past the golden World Cup trophy.

The head-butt was startling and violent. Announcers and commentators called it "disgraceful" and "a classless act," and it sure looked that way. It came from out of nowhere, completely unprovoked as far as the billion or so of us watching could tell. Or was it? Could it be that Zidane was acting rationally, or at least not irrationally? Was he provoked? What constitutes provocation?

In the days that followed most of the international sporting world debated why he did it. What could have caused the great Zidane to lose his composure at the last moment of his career? It was seen from replays that Matterazzi had been harassing Zidane by pulling his jersey and illegally holding him during the action right before the incident. French teammates told how the Italians had been jostling, holding, elbowing, and verbally insulting Zidane the entire game. It was part of the Italians' strategy, they said, to disrupt, distract, and, hopefully, provoke the French star.

Zidane is the son of Algerian immigrants and grew up in the slums of Marseilles. His first football was played on concrete with broken glass underfoot. He is widely admired for speaking out against and taking stands against racism in football. So it was widely noted when the French group SOS Racism issued a statement the day after the game, claiming they had been told by "very well informed sources from within the world of football" that Matterazzi had called Zidane "a dirty terrorist."

If Zidane were reacting to a racist slander, then I could almost support his reaction. In that case, Matterazzi would have really crossed the line. In many parts of the globe, racism has a shameful presence in football among fans as well as players.

But two days after the game, Zidane himself spoke. Apparently, it wasn't a racist taunt that he had reacted to. Without being specific, he said that the Italian had insulted his mother and sister, repeatedly. Matterazzi denied it, saying, "I did not insult his mother. I would not do that." A French newspaper hired a lip reader to examine the videotape and reported Matterazzi calling Zidane's sister "a whore."

Is that justification enough? It makes sense, doesn't it, that if someone trashes your sister, of course you have to headbutt him. Don't you? Is there any choice to it at all?

Do we accept that logic when four-year-olds dispute a toy? Are we understanding when adults scream, curse, and drive wildly in acts of road rage? Do we accept the provocation rationale when a husband blackens his wife's eye and says "she provoked me" because she 1) went out with her female friends, 2) failed to serve dinner promptly, 3) spent too much, or 4) did something or did not do something?

Should Zidane get a pass on this one?

I am a soccer fan because of my 15-year-old son. He has been playing and training continually for five years already. Of course, I am proud of every goal he scores. But I am most proud of Matt for what he didn't do.

Last year during a game a boy on the other team targeted him with hard and dirty physical play--an elbow to the ribs when the ref wasn't looking, etc. Finally, when both went for the ball, he grabbed Matt by the shoulders and slammed him to the ground. Both went down in a heap; the other boy came up screaming and took a swing at Matt.

I report with great pride that Matt merely took a step backward and said not a word. The other boy was sent off with a red card. He left the field belligerent, unhappy, cursing. The game resumed.

Zidane's teammate Thierry Henry addressed Zidane's impoverished youth, saying, "You can take the man out of the rough neighborhood, but you can't take the rough neighborhood out of the man." Does this explain the head-butt? For some it undoubtedly does. The French public is standing by their man. A poll less than a week later found over 60 percent forgiving Zidane and accepting his rationale.

I am conflicted as I take the position of condemning Matterazzi for his apparent slanders while still finding greatest fault with the Frenchman for choosing to answer words with violence. I am vulnerable to being called a naïve white boy who has only seen rough neighborhoods in the movies (mostly true). I don't have Zidane's experience or the experience of millions of men in this country of poverty, gangs, racism, and violence. I don't have the same understanding about responding to racial and family and class insults (other than being called "trailer trash").

Still, I have come to the understanding that violence leads to more violence and initiating violence particularly pollutes our social environment. How would I react to deliberate, repeated provocation such as Zidane endured? Or worse?

To be truthful, I don't know for sure. I have to hearken back to the words of a man I met in Nicaragua. We were both there in the late 1980s living with villagers in the war zone and serving as witnesses to the military assault of the U.S.-funded "contra" guerilla army. Rick had been wounded three times in Vietnam, including getting his leg blown off. He endured years of depression, nightmares, alcoholism, and flashbacks.

By the time I met him 20 years after that war, he had determined that he must renounce verbal, emotional, and physical violence in his own life, forever. He told me he knew that the violence and atrocities he had witnessed were not the way forward. He said, "If it meant dying, then I would rather that than propagate a system that has been so unsuccessful."

Rick's words have haunted and inspired me for years. I have not traveled as rough a road as he, but I have come to similar conclusions. Violence will stop only when we stop using violence to deal with our problems. And it has to start with me.

And what about Zidane? Ultimately, he had a choice. Didn't he?

Tony Switzer works at the Texas Council on Family Violence. This article first appeared at www.mensnonviolence.org. Comments are welcome at tswitz@tcfv.org.