.....This time for the Chateau Lalinde Blog! Amazing!
When I checked my site meter this morning to see who - and where my readers are, I noticed a marked and drastic increase in the number of readers of this blog, the variety of countries around the world where the blog was being read -- as well as the time readers were spending here.
My first reaction was that the new advertisement that I have taken out on the French Entree website must already be paying off -- Big Time! But then I went further and looked up what the referring urls were for all the hits on the site, and although there was quite a big number of visits through the French Entree site, the majority came through search engines with the search words "Zinedine" "Zidane" "Arab" "Muslim" "Veronique".
In a film clip from the BBC Sports, Zinedine Zidane is given a tumultuous and joyous welcome home in Paris with the French team, despite his sending off in the World Cup final. (01:40 mins) President Chirac recognises the brilliance and contribution of this young man, rather than the unfortunate act that caused him to be sent off under a red card in his very final game. "You have the admiration and the affection of the entire French nation," he said in a touching message to the fallen hero. "You are a genius of the world of football!" And the President of France spoke for the nation, it seems, as more than 65% of the 1000 people over the age of 15 years polled yesterday do not condemn their hero for losing his temper for that brief fatal moment in the closing stages of extra time on Sunday night. 55% even stated that they could understand completely his reaction to the unnoted provocation of the Italian defender Marco Materazzi.
In a world where true heroes are far and few between, where children are raised on a menu of random violence in the news, on television, in electronic games, in the playground at school, where the most powerful nations can go unchecked into another country and rape, mutilate and kill innocent people, when a young man like Zidane who comes from a often-maligned ethnic minority and a background where violence was part of his everyday life, it is hard to take sides or to see this issue only in black and white.
Sportsmen have been giving in to anger more and more over the last few years -- and even tennis players, (probably starting with McEnroe), are seen to lose their tempers often on the courts --- but their tantrums are tut-tutted and swept away in a wink with no more than a fine and a rap on the knuckles. In many team sports players with a burning passion and latent anger are sought after even, as this energy enhances and strengthens the performance of the team and the excitement for the spectator is guaranteed to be as intense as it would have been for the Romans watching slaves fighting the beasts in the Collosseum.
What made Zidane's action different was of course that he was not only the captain of the national team, but also the role model for thousands, if not millions of young disadvantaged children and youths not only in France, but around the world. We do not need a World Cup to realise the importance of the game, and the huge influence it plays all over the planet -- not only in the developing nations, but in advanced and rich nations alike.
Much will be written about Zizou and his moment of anger on the field in the days and weeks and years ahead, no doubt, but, when he is judged, may no one forget the effect of this young man's courage and determination as a role model to all youth, the inspiration he has provided to the downtrodden in the slums of the big cities around the world, the respect he has earned with his athletic genius as a sportsman and as a brilliant captain to his nation's team.
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