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''' Zinedine Yazid Zidane''' ({{lang-ar|زين الدين زيدان}} [[transliteration]]: ''Zīn ad-Dīn Zīdān''), (born [[June 23]], [[1972]]) in [[Marseille]], [[France]]), popularly nicknamed '''''Zizou''''', is a French [[football (soccer)]] player of [[Kabyle people|Kabyle]] [[Algeria|Algerian]] descent who has starred for both the [[France national football team|French national team]] and for four club teams, most recently [[Real Madrid]]. Zidane is often considered to be the best footballer of his generation,<ref>[http://www.worldcup2006facts.com/zidane.html World Cup 2006 Official Site] ([[June 4]], 2006)</ref> and one of the greatest of all time. His elegant dribbling, balance, passing ability, shot accuracy, shot selection and well placed free kicks have made him one of the game's finest artists and the natural successor of [[Michel Platini]] as France's top playmaker.
''' Zinedine Yazid Zidane''' ({{lang-ar|زين الدين زيدان}} [[transliteration]]: ''Zīn ad-Dīn Zīdān''), (born [[June 23]], [[1972]]) in [[Marseille]], [[France]]), popularly nicknamed '''''Zizou''''', is a French [[football]] player of [[Kabyle people|Kabyle]] [[Algeria|Algerian]] descent who has starred for both the [[France national football team|French national team]] and for four club teams, most recently [[Real Madrid]]. Zidane is often considered to be the best footballer of his generation,<ref>[http://www.worldcup2006facts.com/zidane.html World Cup 2006 Official Site] ([[June 4]], 2006)</ref> and one of the greatest of all time. His elegant dribbling, balance, passing ability, shot accuracy, shot selection and well placed free kicks have made him one of the game's finest artists and the natural successor of [[Michel Platini]] as France's top playmaker.


On [[25 April]], 2006, Zidane officially announced his decision to retire from both club and [[France national football team|international football]] after the [[2006 FIFA World Cup]].<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/4942564.stm Zidane to retire after World Cup from BBC SPORT] ([[April 25]], 2006)</ref>
On [[25 April]], 2006, Zidane officially announced his decision to retire from both club and [[France national football team|international football]] after the [[2006 FIFA World Cup]].<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/4942564.stm Zidane to retire after World Cup from BBC SPORT] ([[April 25]], 2006)</ref>

Revision as of 11:51, 7 July 2006

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"Zidane" redirects here. For other uses, see Zidane (disambiguation).
Zinedine Zidane

Personal information
Full name Zinedine Yazid Zidane
Height 1.85 m / 6 ft 1 in
Position(s) Offensive Midfielder
Team information
Current team
 Retired
‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of July 5, 2006

Zinedine Yazid Zidane (Arabic: زين الدين زيدان transliteration: Zīn ad-Dīn Zīdān), (born June 23, 1972) in Marseille, France), popularly nicknamed Zizou, is a French football player of Kabyle Algerian descent who has starred for both the French national team and for four club teams, most recently Real Madrid. Zidane is often considered to be the best footballer of his generation,[2] and one of the greatest of all time. His elegant dribbling, balance, passing ability, shot accuracy, shot selection and well placed free kicks have made him one of the game's finest artists and the natural successor of Michel Platini as France's top playmaker.

On 25 April, 2006, Zidane officially announced his decision to retire from both club and international football after the 2006 FIFA World Cup.[3]

Club career

Zidane was born in Marseille and raised in notoriously hardscrabble La Castellane, one of the housing projects (cité HLM) in the northern suburbs of Marseille (The "Quartiers Nord"). Though born in Marseille, Zidane has never played for Olympique de Marseille. His time in the French league was spent with AS Cannes and Bordeaux, before he was bought by Juventus for £3 million.

In 2001 Zidane transferred from Italian team Juventus F.C. to Spanish club side Real Madrid on a four-year contract. The transfer fee was €66 million, making him the most expensive player in football history. His fellow 'Galacticos' at Madrid included David Beckham, Raúl González, Luís Figo, Ronaldo, and Roberto Carlos. He scored the winning goal in a 2-1 win over the German team Bayer Leverkusen in the 2001-2002 Champions League Final in Glasgow's Hampden Park.

On the 7 May 2006, Zidane played his last home game for Real Madrid at the famous Santiago Bernabéu stadium. Real Madrid players wore a special jersey which had "ZIDANE 2001 - 2006" written on the bottom of the club logo. As expected, the Real Madrid fans gave him a warm reception and kept cheering him through the whole game. This game was played against Villarreal CF and, unfortunately for Zidane, the best result that Real Madrid could get was a 3-3 draw coming from behind. Zidane scored the second goal for Real Madrid without any major celebration. Zidane exchanged his jersey with Juan Roman Riquelme, the Villarreal CF and Argentinian midfielder. At the end of the game, the Real Madrid fans said goodbye to Zidane by giving him a massive ovation that left him in tears.

International career

As he has both French and Algerian citizenship, Zidane could have played for Algeria, but the Algerian national coach Abdelhamid Kermali denied him a position in the team, arguing that the young midfielder was "not fast enough". Zidane received his first "Bleus" jersey on August 17, 1994, entering at the 63rd minute of a match against the Czech Republic. France was behind 2-0 when Zidane came to the pitch and subsequently scored two goals, which led to a 2-2 final result.

Zidane was a member of the French football team in the 1998 FIFA World Cup, scoring two headed goals in the final against Brazil, and helping France to a 3-0 victory. Earlier in the competition he received a red card and a two-game suspension in a 4-0 win over Saudi Arabia for stamping on an opposing player for no apparent reason. Reports from people close to Zidane state that the Saudi player in question had provoked him verbally[citation needed]. Two years later, Zidane and France won a second major championship, Template:Ec2.

Injuries prevented him from performing at his best in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and France's defense of their title was spectacularly unsuccessful; the team was eliminated in the first round without scoring a single goal. Zidane rushed back from his injury in time to play in France's last game, but could not produce his best form.

On August 12, 2004, after France's performance in the Template:Ec2, losing to eventual winners Greece, Zidane retired from international football. He announced on February 4 2005 that he would retire from the game at the end of his current contract with Real Madrid, at the end of the 2006-07 season.

After France experienced serious problems in attempting to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Zidane announced on August 3, 2005 that he was coming out of international retirement to make a comeback for Les Bleus. He stated on his official website: "I have gone back on my decision, one year after I said it was categorical." On the same day, French teammate and Chelsea midfielder Claude Makélélé, who also quit the French team following Template:Ec2, said he wanted to come out of international retirement as well, and in the same week, Lilian Thuram made the same announcement. The trio made their competitive return in the 3-0

Wikipedia has media related to [[:Category:|]].

qualifier win against the Faroe Islands on September 3, and France went on to win their qualifying group.

However, on 25 April 2006, after an injury plagued season at Real Madrid, Zidane announced that he would retire from professional football after representing France in the 2006 World Cup finals to be held in Germany.

On May 27, 2006, Zidane earned his 100th cap for France with a 1-0 victory over Mexico at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis on the outskirts of Paris. It was his last match in that stadium and he became only the fourth Frenchman after Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps and Lilian Thuram to earn a century of national caps. He was substituted early in the second half.

In the closing minutes of France's second match of the 2006 World Cup, Zidane was given a yellow card for running into a player late. As a result, he was suspended from the third and final match of the group stage.[4] France nonetheless won that match against Togo 2-0,[5] allowing Zidane to play in the knockout round against Spain.

In the Round 2 knockout match in the FIFA 2006 World Cup, Zidane assisted on the second goal and scored a third during France's 3-1 victory over Spain, on June 27, 2006. This win booked Zidane and France's date with defending champions Brazil in the quarter-finals of the tournament.

On 1 July, 2006, France beat Brazil 1-0 in Frankfurt to set up a semi-final meeting with Portugal. Turning in a virtuoso performance complete with one of his trademark "roulette" spins, Zidane provided the free-kick assist from which Thierry Henry scored the winning goal, and was named Man of the Match by FIFA's Technical Study Group.[6] On 5 July, 2006, France met Portugal in Munich for the semi-final. Zidane scored a penalty kick, which turned out to be the only goal of the game and saw France through to the final.


He has been elected FIFA World Player of the Year three times (1998, 2000, 2003) and once as European Footballer of the Year (1998).

Legacy

Zidane reached the status of football icon and top world-class player after his performance in the final of the 1998 World Cup. While not performing at the height of his ability throughout the tournament in 1998, he did explode in the final where France beat Brazil 3-0. Scoring two goals and being the crux of France's vaunted midfield, he became a household name in the world of football.

In 2004, Zidane was named to the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living footballers selected by Pelé as a part of FIFA's centenary celebrations. In 2004, he was also voted the best European player for the past 50 years in the UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll.

In the final stages of his career, many pundits and fans alike already identify him as the most important player of his generation and his name is regularly mentioned in discussions regarding who is the greatest player of all time.

Honours

With the French national team:

With Juventus F.C.:

With Real Madrid:

Personal honours:

Preceded by European Footballer of the Year
1998 		Succeeded by
Preceded by FIFA World Player of the Year
1998 		Succeeded by
Preceded by FIFA World Player of the Year
2000 		Succeeded by
Preceded by UEFA Champions League Most Valuable Player
2001-02 		Succeeded by
Preceded by FIFA World Player of the Year
2003 		Succeeded by

Trivia

  • Zidane is one of the football icons of his generation and is known to be modest, quiet and admittedly shy. However, Zidane has occasionally shown a quick temper on the pitch. One such display occurred in a 2000/2001 Champions League match between Juventus Turin and Hamburger SV, in which Zidane headbutted Jochen Kientz; he received a red card for this action. He also received a red card in the 1998 World Cup for stamping on a Saudi player.
  • When Zidane came back from international retirement, in August 2005, he was reinstated as captain of the French national team, where he wears squad number 10. At Real Madrid he wore squad number 5.
  • In an interview he declared that when he was a teenager, Zidane admired Olympique de Marseille's Uruguayan playmaker Enzo Francescoli (after whom he named his eldest son). He once was a ballboy at a match with Francescoli and thus saw him up close.
  • He was an Athens 2004 Torchbearer.
  • In 2004, Zinedine Zidane was appointed as "Chevalier" (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur by French President Jacques Chirac.
  • The first penalty kick Zidane ever missed with the French National team was during his last match in a French stadium, while playing a friendly game against China in Saint-Étienne, June 7 2006, the last preparation game for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, where he accidentally slid and placed the ball above the goal.
  • Zidane's 34th birthday coincided with the day France faced Togo, the very last day of the 2006 FIFA World Cup First Round. However, he missed this match due to suspension.
  • Zidane scored the third goal in a Round 2 clash over favourites Spain at the 2006 FIFA World Cup which sent France through to the quarter-finals for the first time since 1998. That day, a song dedicated to Zidane started circulating on the Internet, titled "Allez Zizou" Download MP3 here
  • Zidane's first hat trick was against Espanyol in La Liga 2006 with Real Madrid.
  • Zidane provided Henry the assist in the quarter-final clash between France and Brazil at the 2006 FIFA World Cup which resulted in a 1-0 win and a world cup win:draw:loss ratio of 3:1:1 against Brazil. It was the first time in 53 games that Henry scored from a Zidane assist.
  • Zidane scored the only goal of the game (a penalty - the team's eighth consecutive successful spot-kick) in France's semi-final match against Portugal in the 2006 FIFA World Cup to send his country into the final against Italy (Note that Zidane has also scored a penalty kick against Portugal in the semi-final of Euro 2000, a penalty kick that was contested by the Portuguese players. )

Merchandising

Zidane was sponsored by LEGO for a while and wore their logo. He was the official endorser of their Soccer/Football line, and was also immortalised in plastic in the form of a LEGO minifigure of himself, available in several of the sets.

Zidane is also sponsored by Adidas, who supply him with Predator football boots and gear.

Personal life

Zidane's first name is Arabic for "Ornament of the Faith", while his family name is Arabic for "Increases or Grows the Faith".

His wife, Veronique, is a former dancer and model of Spanish origin. They married in 1993 and have four sons named Enzo, Luca, Théo and Elyaz (Arabic: إلياس). Zidane describes himself a "non-practicing Muslim". [1].

Despite rumor to the contrary, Zidane's family was not an harki, or Algerian supporter of French rule, something that he made clear himself.[7]

External links

Video

  1. ^ Source: FIFA World Cup official site
  2. ^ World Cup 2006 Official Site (June 4, 2006)
  3. ^ Zidane to retire after World Cup from BBC SPORT (April 25, 2006)
  4. ^ France vs. Korea Republic from Yahoo! (June 18, 2006)
  5. ^ Togo-France official report from FIFA (June 23, 2006)
  6. ^ "Man of the Match: Stage 2". Yahoo!. Retrieved 2006-07-02..
  7. ^ The Hindu - Icon on the margin
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