Camus, Zidane and Splitting the World in Two

In his New York Times piece, Camus and Zidane Offer Views on How Things End, Roger Cohen correctly takes the opportunity provided by the Zidane headbutt incident, to invoke philosophy and the existential reality of life and football.

Football and the World Cup, it turns out is no mere game, played mindlessly and without consequence or relevance by children.

Football is a parallel world full of all of the drama of life.

Camus was in his life a dramatist as well as a writer and philosopher. He is also known to be a big football fan and player himself: a goalkeeper. He is known in the football world for this quote:

"Everything I know in life about morality and obligations, I owe to football."

There are many levels to the discussion of the "morality" of what transpired between the great Zidane and the oafish but crafty Italian defender. It would make for a great play. Perhaps Raymond Domenech could direct it--for he along with being France's national team coach, has done theatre.

The writing wouldn't be much work, the dialogue is all out there, getting churned daily on blogs and discussion boards, with everyone taking sides and taking on the characters and acting out the parts.

But what would we conclude? What would be the final message? That Zidane was wrong for his violence? That the Italian was quilty of rascism? Or something more complex?

I am anxious to see if the FIFA investigation reveals anything. If Zidane will make the charge of racism. If so, watch out. FIFA would be under pressure to back up its campaign of saying no to racism with a harsh punishment.

But if Zidane does not make the charge, then what? Does the story end? Does the world stop wondering?

For me, it will be of little consequence what a charge of racism might bring. It is a subject that needs to be tackled globally to be sure. But within the game itself there are more specific moral problems that need to be tackled and the biggest one is of the killing of talent.

Whether it was a racial comment or something else, like constant kicks in the ankles, shirt pulling, elbows, punches, pinches, trash talk, it is a shame that someone of great ability gets nullified by someone else out to premeditatively kill his talent and steal games and cups.

You have to wonder about premeditation when you hear the Italian defender before the game speaking directly about Zidane:

"We have players that can mark Zidane, like Gattuso...There's no need to charge him up, otherwise he is capable of splitting the world in two."

What is "marking" exactly? Is it what Portugal's Carvalho and his merry band of defenders did to Rooney to get one of World's top young players red carded in one of the biggest games of the tournament?

"Oh Rooney is a professional, he should be able to handle that," people say.

"Oh Zidane has been around long enough to know not to get phased by such tactics," people say.

And yet two of arguably the best players in the world are red carded in the World Cup knock out stages.

Knock out stages indeed.

On football's biggest stage, the world has been split in two and the brightest stars have died.