Zinedine proves his greatness

13 April 2012

Sven-Goran Eriksson kept saying England didn't deserve to lose and that it was simply bad luck that they only capitulated in the last 120 seconds of this quite momentous game. David Beckham insisted that "France are one of the best teams in the world and we have outplayed them for 90 minutes."

Sadly, the captain and coach were deluding themselves.

Where was the bad luck when you take off a fearless kid, Wayne Rooney, who was making the French defence look as nervous as if they were trying to lasso a runaway bull, and bring on the pedestrian Emile Heskey, whose only frightening contribution proved to be a careless, clumsy last-second foul which led to the equaliser?

Where, Fabien Barthez rightly wanted to know, was the luck in his lightning reflexes to deny Beckham from the penalty spot?

"Luck doesn't enter into it. You have to stir it up. This is the result of the hard work," said the man who had doubtless studied plenty of Becks' spot kicks at Manchester United's training complex.

As for Beckham's suggestion that England outplayed the reigning European champions for 90 minutes, well this was simply laughable. They certainly matched them with a containment game plan which worked almost as perfectly as they could have hoped.

Yet do not let the excellence of much of their tactical execution eclipse the memory of that first half-hour, when France seemed to be playing the game on a different level. Ultimately, let's not hear any more suggestion that Les Bleus were fortunate with their late, late show.

"Don't just look at me, look at Zinedine Zidane," said Barthez. How could we do anything other? It was impossible to take out eyes off him as he struck the weird new Roteiro ball so perfectly that it hit the back of the net from 23 yards like a silver tracer.

Frankly, France deserved what they got because they trusted their incomparable champion to eventually deliver and, after a tough evening in which Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard had snapped away at him like cubs trying to rile an old lion, Zidane finally did roar at them in historic fashion.

England, in contrast, had already wrapped up their would-be champion, Rooney, in cotton wool.

In truth, it was absolutely no surprise that Eriksson should have removed him from the fray.

A coach schooled in Italy has always believed in holding on to what you have when you're one-up. Yet this time his natural caution did not serve him for the best.

Eriksson said he had been worried about Rooney tiring, yet just three minutes before he took him off, the Everton teenager had been sprightly enough to clatter through Lilian Thuram and run the legs out of his pursuer for half the length of the pitch before he was brought down for the penalty by Mikael Silvestre.

It was the ageing Thuram who was tiring, not Rooney. The lad's performance had been another towering, glowering one.

He's completely regained his confidence and discomfited quality defenders. He was so aggressive and hungry I feared he might eat Claude Makelele in one confrontation.

If he goes through this tournament without a booking, it will be some achievement.

Yet this was Zidane's night. Again. A recent poll in the Journal du Dimanche saw him voted him the most popular Frenchman of all time and for 120 seconds that didn't seem at all daft.

Some believe Zidane doesn't quite belong among the company of the very finest footballers of all - Pele, Diego Maradona, Alfredo Di Stefano - yet every year, his claim seems more convincing. Just store this freakish injurytime double next to the other monuments to his greatness - his two headers which won the World Cup in 1998, his bravura orchestration of the Euro 2000 triumph, the exquisite volley in the 2002 Champions League final.

It was another Real Madrid hero, Di Stefano, who said that Zidane played "as if he has silk gloves on each foot". Yet though that perfectly illustrated his languid grace, it didn't capture his steel. When he was injured at the 2002 World Cup, France collapsed.

But under his command, they never give up. It's why they started Euro 2004 the way they finished the championship four years ago, with a last second equaliser and an eventual 2-1 win.

"It's certainly one of the best games I've ever played in," reckoned Zidane afterwards. He admitted that "we didn't expect such a tough challenge from the English".

He made it sound as if the French had started out with just a bit of complacency but that he suspected there may be some unfinished business between these two sides at the tournament.

Pondering Rooney's substitution, Eriksson was adamant: "If we played the game again I wouldn't change the tactics at all."

It would be wonderful to be able to test this claim on July 4 but the feeling persists that the Swede will have to dare to dare if he wants to outdo Zizou's genius.

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David Beckham

David Jones (Footballer)

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Wayne Rooney

Zinedine proves his greatness

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