[sociate] Chilavert! or, What was Zidane thinking?
- From: "Jerry Michalski" <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Sociate News" <sociate@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 04:38:05 -0400
I really enjoyed the World Cup games, which ended for me with two memorable
bits.
The first is the exclamation "Chilavert!," shouted by one of the game
announcers on Univision, which I was watching instead of ESPN's milquetoast
coverage.
I'd never heard of Chilavert, but it turns out he was a
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Luis_Chilavert> goalie in Paraguay,
famous for being especially good at shooting penalty kicks. The games are
over, but I still hear a joyously shouted "Chilaveeer!" echoing in my head.
The other memorable bit was the now-iconic head-butt that
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinedine_Zidane> Zidane launched in the final
game (FIFA is trying to remove it from online video sites, so it's a moving
target, but a search like
<http://youtube.com/results?search=zidane+headbutt&search_type=search_videos
> this should turn it up).
What got in his brain? In the last ten minutes of overtime of the biggest
game in the soccer world, the last game of his normal professional career, a
billion-plus people watching, he goes and does something so blatant that it
still amazes us in replays.
He's been playing forever, earning a reputation as a classy, solid player --
one of the best of his generation. Surely he didn't expect to be off camera.
He knows that the other guy's job is to goad, cajole and insult if he thinks
it'll get him off balance somehow. That can't be unusual to him. And yet he
blows his reputation in the last minutes of his last match. Sad, and weird.
Fortunately, the Net has been
<http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/07/11/zidane_world_cu> riffing wonderfully
on the headbutt.
posted by Jerry at
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2006_07_01_archive.html#11526694427354
3464> 6:57 PM
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