While I was reading some of the many articles on the now infamous head butt of Zinédine Zidane, I kept wondering if to understand it is necessary to have found yourself in the position where you felt unwanted somewhere in spite of the fact that you knew that you were the best person there and that you had the talent to be there because the people saw you simply as a woman, a black person, a Jew, an Arab, as someone who could not belong no matter how great s/he is because of her/his ethnicity. In an editorial yesterday, le Figaro, a French newspaper asserted that a player of Zidane’s class shouldn’t have done what he did. But that is precisely the problem. There is nobody like Zidane. He is a pioneer. He is in a class by himself not so much because of his talent, but because of his origins and of his ethnicity. He is the first player of African origins to be viewed by millions as the best player in the world. Football isn’t played on Mars, but on Earth. Thus, what happens on a football field reflects what happens in Society. For other millions of people, it doesn’t matter that Zidane is a great football player, what matters to them is the fact that his parents come from Algeria and that he isn’t white or even Brazilian and they only tolerate his différence because he does things with the ball that nobody else can. It is hard to write but color and ethnicity matter on the football field. Great players such as Zidane like to fool themselves into thinking that they will be able to force people with their talent or even their genius to see them as men. For football geniuses, the football field is a paradise where they can excel and where they can protect themselves from the injustice of the world, which the members of their families and their communities have to confront. They believe that talent, genius is a shield, a cape which like the one of Superman, will protect them against everything including the fact that human beings still believe that a certain color and a certain ethnicity is an affirmation of one’s superiority. Materazzi, the Italian player who was received Zidane’s head butt of the chest, forced Zizou to crash back to earth. He reminded him what millions of people think that he is a subhuman, and that in spite of the fact that he was the best player of the field, he was inferior to him and to all of the members of his team because of his ethnicity. When Materazzi admits insulting Zidane and even says that to justify his words, that they were words that are said everything on a football team, he shows us that football reflects the ills of society. By insulting the arrogant Arab, Materazzi wanted to show Zidane that he may be a football God, but he is still an Arab, and a probable terrorist who forces his sister to hide her body and her fact under a veil. Zizou’s headbutt reminded the one which George Weah, a former Liberian player who played from Milan AC gave to the head of Jorge Costa, a Porto Player. Weah headbutted Costa because of numerous racist remarks, which he made throughout the match. Weah who was a great player thought like Zidane that his talent and the fact that he was on a football field who protect him from hearing certain things people who shared his ethnicity, but who lack his talent her everyday and he snapped when he realized that talent or even genius does not yet overcome racism and prejudice. It is impossible to understand what happens Sunday afternoon without taking into account the context and the fact that there was a crucial difference between the two players involved in that incident. And that difference, in many societies nowadays, would have made one inferior to the other no matter what the reality on the field said. After Materazzi saw Zidane almost score with his head a goal that would have made France world champions, he decided that he was going to get the Arrogant and gifted Arab to make sure that Italy won. Zidane couldn’t accept that a player who doesn’t even have half his talent dare spit o his family by reminding that his origins by reminding him that what mattered wasn’t was he could do with the ball, but where he came from. Before headbutting Materazzi, Zidane must have relived his extraordinary career and realized that he had failed for he hadn’t been able with his genius to transcend ethnicity to become just a great football player instead of been an Arab who has great football skills. It is easy for those who have never been on the side of the weak and of the people who are condemned to fight for equality because their origins are written on their skins to condemn Zidane and to write long essay about his imperfections because to them, the headbutt was simply an act of violence which a genius shouldn’t do. But I understand Zidane because I see that his headbutt was a way for him to say not only enough to Materazzi, but to refuse to be treated as millions of people who look like him are treated. I would have preferred Zidane to turn his head, to ignore Materazzi and to act again as he did throughout the world and throughout his career as a superman by arguing with his indifference that words don’t matter. But he couldn’t, because he had realized at the twilight of his career that words mattered because he couldn’t play football forever, and because, in spite of the fact that he was a football God, he would become an Arab the minute after he retired from football. I understand Zidane’s headbutt because I know how it feels like to be humiliated by someone who feels that he is entitled to do so just because history and society has taught him that he was better than you are because of his ethnicity. I will always remember watching the game between Cameroon and England in 1990, during that year’s world cup that was happening in Italy. Cameroon was beating England 2 to 1 and was just a couple of minutes away not only from becoming the first African nation to be in the semi-final, but also to beat the country who had invented football. My mother told me that it wasn’t going to happen because the world was ready and because the hooligans were going to destroy everything if it happened. An hour letter, as the Cameroonian players were thanking their supporters and as the England players were thanking their lucky stars and the referee for the two penalty-kicks which had saved them from the humiliation of being beaten by a team of N*****, I understood that my mother was right and that the world wasn’t ready. Last Sunday, when Materazzi performed sublimely like Al Pacino the role of the victim of the Arab player who had finally let his violent instincts get the better of him, when the referee after discussing the incident which one of his colleagues showed him the red card as to show him that the football field wasn’t a mosque, I understood that Zidane wasn’t going to win the world cup even though he deserved it. The reason for that unfairness was simple. Before being a football God, before being the hero of the Castellane, the neighborhood where he grew up, before even being the captain of the bleus, the French football team, he was a man who is proud of where he comes from and who loves his mother and his sister more than he loves football.