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EXIT LINES >>>> Zizou leaves the pitch without acknowledging French coach Raymond Domenech

Web Exclusive | The World Cup | France v Korea A Sad End To A Wonderful Career MIsfortune, bad refereeing and lousy management turn Zizou's grand finale into a damp squib By BRUCE CRUMLEY subscribe to TIME Printable Version email this story Final Insult: Behind Zizou's Moment of Madness Zinedine Zidane: Assessing Zizou's Legacy Bruce Crumley : Why No Joie De Vivre?

Posted Sunday, June 18, 2006; 23.55BST
The end could not have been a more brutal contrast to the beginning than what was quite probably the last appearance of French star Zinedine Zidane on a football pitch Sunday night in Leipzig. When he first wore the colors in August, 1994, Zidane entered a France-Czech Republic friendly with his team down 0-2, and coach Aimée Jacquet looking for new spark. He got it: Zidane quickly scored two goals with what would soon come to be known as his trademark flair and an instinctive genius.

But Jacquet had more up his sleeve when he subbed Zidane that night in Bordeaux. At that period, Jacquet told Time two years ago, "I was really looking for a player to build a new French team around, and I knew Zizou would be that guy. I knew he was extraordinary". He wasn't wrong: one World and European title later, a Golden Ball award to his name, and a stellar, championship-studded career with Juventus and Real Madrid to his record, Zinedine Zidane leaves the game as one of its living legends.

Tragic then, that his exit from the pitch came in a late substitution and last-gasp attempt by French coach Raymond Domenech to grab a late goal to break France's 1-1 deadlock with Group G leader Korea. It didn't work, and now Zidane in all probability is gone for good — his pro retirement already announced, and his career over once this Cup is. Instead of the standing ovation he richly deserved, Zidane instead went out with French fans in the stadium apparently unaware he was going— walking past Domenech without a glance, a look of disgust on his face as he threw a water bottle towards the bench. Zidane, who returned from international retirement to save France — and a Domenech he's known to disdain — from the brink of non-qualification for this World Cup, now finds his exit hastened by the same Domenech seeking to pull off some mullet-headed alchemy by pulling one of the greatest players in the game off the pitch, and indeed from the game, for good.

This decidedly unheroic, anti-climatic end comes from a convergence of factors beyond Domenech's own increasingly masochistic management. The first was France's own inability to hang on to its 1-0 lead over South Korea — a one-goal draw that Domenech will doubtless hail as at least having broken a French World Cup scoring drought extending back to the 1998 final.

Indeed, with France clearly looking to conserve that one goal advantage in the second half, any spectator who has seen France play much recently knew the Korean equalizer was not just likely, but absolutely inevitable. So too, it now seems, are France and Zidane's return home. With Switzerland likely to beat Togo on Monday, les Bleus will find themselves in third place in the group. Even in the best scenario (ie.France actually score lots of goals and beat Togo on June 23), they'd have to rely on the outcome of the Switzerland-South Korea game to know whether they might just sneak out a timid second-place qualification for the knockout phase.

The second factor is that the yellow card Zidane got in the 85th minute — his second in two matches — automatically disqualifies him for France's last match against Togo. Effectively then, Zizou's great career is over.

How did it come to this? Given France's almost predictable self-destruction in losing its lead, one hesitates to blame Mexican referee Benito Archundia for gluing the yellow card to Zidane's mug for the slight collision that sent his South Korean chum into death convulsions. After all, Señor Archundia had so thoroughly butchered the entire match that his role in Zidane's end was almost predictable: he'd been building his screw-ups into a real crescendo of judgemental spasm all night.

For example, neither he nor his trio of cane-carrying associates saw Patrick Viera's 18th minute header clearly cross the goal line before line before being batted out by Korean keeper Jae Woon Lee. (Message to FIFA: video. Video. VIDEO!! People watch it. People use it. It's fun; popular, hip. And, if given the chance, it would help your referees stop looking like world champion chodes by defacing matches with their errors. See Technophobia, TIME Magazine, June 26, 2006)

He also failed to call two (probably three) fouls in the South Korean box that should have resulted in penalties. That takes France's tally up to four after the hand-ball against Switzerland that was ruled kosher. Even in a World Cup that has already seen its share of jaw-droppingly bad officiating (Saturday had a double ka-thud with the two dogs who oversaw Czech Republic-Ghana and USA-Italy; fortunately, unspeakable player stupidity in some degree fig-leafed their refereeing imposture), Archundia has proven himself a paragon of whistle, uh, blowing bow-wows. To create this guy's equivalent in serial killers, science would have to clone Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Uday Hussein's favorite meat-shredder. In sum: he's massively not real good.

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If Archundia's vandalism of the match and Zidane's exit weren't bad enough, Domenech — known for having a sideline career in acting — tried to act as if things were just peachy. Had someone had the courtesy to knock out one of his teeth, he'd have been a ringer for Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Newman. He reacted to the dismal turn of events — particularly regarding Zidane — with a politician's dose of fantasy. He replied to post-match questions about Zidane's departure by noting he was "an optimist" and stressing his belief that France would qualify for the knockout matches — meaning his dear Zizou would soon grace the pitch with his presence again.

Whether it was the football gods intervening, or a stadium technician with an ironic sense of humor, as Domenech oozed his words of confidence and hope, Leipzig's Zentralstadion sound system stopped its previously incessant blare of loboto-pop and cranked up Monty Python's Always Look On the Bright Side of Life (you can't make this stuff up) and with perfect timing the lines "Always look on the bright side of death/just before you draw your terminal breath" acted as the perfect backing music for the manager's claim that France — and Zidane — would be back!

For Zidane's sake — indeed, for all those who love this game and the players who have made it great — let's all hope Eric Idle's ditty is prophetic. Otherwise, we have just witnessed one of the saddest curtain falls in history, and the departure of one of the most loveable mensches in sport.

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