Tears are obscuring the true power of art for the French

 
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25 October 2012

The French are in a funk. Yes, I know, they’re always in a funk — it’s their national resting state. But today something quite specific has their agg up. It goes by the name of ‘Headbutt’ and it is a statue, currently standing outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris, which shows Zinedine Zidane nutting Marco Materazzi in the chest during the 2006 World Cup Final.

The statue, by the Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed, has been there for a month and now a group of po-faced French football officials have had enough. They wrote a Dear Zizou letter this week, begging him to use his personal influence to have the artwork torn down.

“By choosing this provocative image, the artist has deliberately opted to ignore all your talents and all the positive emotions that you were able to share with the people of our country,” said the letter, which was not, but ought to have been, signed ‘Boo hoo hoo’.

If you haven’t seen the statue, I would save yourself the Eurostar ticket. Obviously it’s terrible. A five-metre monstrosity cast in today’s most tiresomely faddish material, bronze, it makes Zidane look like a shop mannequin falling over because his T-shirt is too heavy. The composition is inaccurate and clumsy. So, too, the expression on Materazzi’s face, which is weirdly similar to the Pornalikes series of amusing doppelganger stills from adult movies that used to run in Loaded magazine about a decade ago.

Despite the lousy composition, however, the statue says something interesting about sport — something that has entirely eluded the bedwetters who have written to Zidane begging for his disapproval.

Zidane’s deranged last actions on a football field — his uncouth and uncontrolled act of rampage in the final professional game of his career — are artistically fascinating. Here was a footballing god: a World Cup, European Championships and Champions League winner, a man who had won the 1998 World Cup Final against Brazil almost single-headedly, who was voted in 2004 as the greatest European footballer of the last 50 years — unquestionably the best midfielder of his generation and an all-time international great.

But there was something dangerous and mercurial about Zidane — whose Algerian parents made him representative of the feared other in French society — something that erupted in a shocking denouement to his professional career. The best sportsmen are themselves artists — the headbutt was the moment that Zidane confirmed that he was both. He was never fully in control of his genius.

France has form at turning out sportsmen-artists like these. Eric Cantona, my all-time sporting hero, is the most obvious. Talent almost too much for a man to contain — a violent temper that was distasteful and destructive at times but without which he could not have been who he was.

Even Thierry Henry, in whom I could never feel as interested as Cantona, despite his obvious brilliance, had his moment.

The handball he got away with against Ireland in 2009, which put France in the 2010 World Cup and Ireland out of it, was a piece of egregious foul play seemingly at odds with everything in Henry’s career to that point.

His shrugged admission afterwards was deeply unsettling. But it also enriched the story of his genius. The Henry bronze outside Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium shows Henry sliding on his knees, celebrating a goal. It is a nice gee-up for fans going into the ground but artistically it is, frankly, incredibly boring.

The point is that it is impossible for anyone with half a brain to look at the Zidane statue, ineptly done as it is, and think only of his headbutt. If it were Joey Barton kneeing Sergio Aguero in the arse, or Ryan Shawcross breaking Aaron Ramsey’s leg, or Vinnie Jones grabbing Gazza by the scrotum, or any other mundane act of sporting violence committed by a journeyman thug, maybe so. But this is Zidane.

By portraying the sportsman at his worst, the artist automatically evokes memories of him at his best. And he shows us that even sportsmen who are seemingly capable of perfection are, in their hearts, frail and angry humans, too. Ripping down the Zidane statue would be an act of stupidity, philistinism and sporting ignorance. I would hope that Zidane, on receipt of the crybaby letter this week, chucked it in la poubelle.

I’ve solved defensive mystery for Fergie

Sir Alex Ferguson claimed after Tuesday night’s creaky 3-2 home victory over Braga that his side’s defensive problems were mysterious to him. “I can’t understand our defending. I can’t get to the bottom of it at all,” he said. Really? Whenever Michael Carrick lumbers out in central defence, United tend to play one way: porously. United’s chronic defensive injuries demand squad rotation but playing central midfielders at the back is a false solution. With the best will in the world, United are not Barcelona.

The PM’s chance for a real Games legacy

Much backslapping surrounded the announcement that the Olympic Games came in around £377million below budget. Since this counts as a minor miracle, we can say that Sebastian Coe has moved a step closer to sainthood. But it is also worth wondering what happens to all that budget surplus. Is it swallowed back into the maw of the Government deficit? Or could it be allocated to schools and sports centres and all the things that genuinely help give a Games its legacy?

It would be a crime to miss this report

A report published by the sports foundation Laureus this week made a case for sport as a means of preventing young people falling into crime. It came up with some gimmicky economic statistics, the headline being that every 1 invested in sport saved 5 spent on truancy, crime and ill health. I don’t buy these sorts of speculative numbers but the anecdotal evidence in the report about sport’s capacity to change children’s lives is very powerful. Essential reading — download it at laureus.com

Freddie’s ready to bowl over sceptics

Amusement greeted the news that Freddie Flintoff received his professional boxing licence this week, as he prepares for a four-round fight on November 30. He is training nine times a week down here in Battersea, under the gimlet eye of Barry McGuigan and Barry’s son, Shane. I’ve watched them work the pads and can report that Fred looks fit, lean and up for it, with an absolutely booming straight right. It’s no joke — Flintoff is taking it very seriously indeed.

Twitter @dgjones

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