Why, Zidane? Why?
All Zidane did was hand over the captain's armband to goalkeeper Fabien Barthez and walk slowly off, unwrapping the bandage on his right hand.
It was as if Zidane had bared his wild side for a flash of a moment, and returned to what the world knows him as -- a fiercely private genius.
In all his career, Zidane has religiously avoided being drawn into the racial politics that has plagued France in general in recent years and tried to draw in Zidane in particular, for his Algerian roots.
The only time he made a public statement was when he said, 'I say this once for all time, my father is not a Harki.'
Harki is an Arabic word for those Algerians who had supported French colonial rule. And Zidane's rare public outburst was in response to posters that said 'Zidane Harki' in the run up to the France-Algeria football match in 2001.
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