James Lawton: A moment to blot an entire career

Football may count what happened here in the place where the flame of Hitler's pagan Olympics once burned as a night of drama to crown an often superb 18th World Cup. But it is fooling itself. It was another defeat for all those who believe that the game may just have the capacity to redeem itself at those times when it is supposed to show a good face - and a good soul.

Here in Germany for a month the game of the world has produced some beautiful images, and the bracing excitement of some brilliantly emerging young players, but all of it faded in one moment of violence that would have been shocking in a back alley, let alone a stage which had commanded an audience of more than a billion.

That it should be delivered by one of the legends of football only compounded the disastrous impact. Zinedine Zidane was supposed to provide the game in which he has been lionised for so long with one of its supreme stories; a second World Cup triumph eight years after his first. He was supposed to play his last game on a cloud of impending glory. Instead he left before the end of the match which was supposed to define his career, a red card having been brandished in his face, after he thrust his head into the chest of Italian defender Marco Materazzi.

The suspension of reality that followed was as stunning as the moment when Zidane buried his head in the body of an opponent.

The Argentinian referee Horicio Elizondo, who sent off England's Wayne Rooney in what now seems to have been a small affray indeed, was booed relentlessly, right up to the moment when he received his medal along with the Italian victors of the penalty shoot-out. Presumably French fans and the majority of neutrals had missed the flashpoint which erupted so suddenly.

In the wake of the incident there can be only two possible interpretations. One is that Zidane, after weeks of gathering tension in which he had brilliantly recreated the best of his career in victories over the pre-tournament favourites Brazil and the much-admired Spain, simply lost his head and had something akin to a nervous breakdown.

The other was that he was reacting to a remark from the Italian player which went straight to the core of his pride; in his family and his Muslim ancestors.

That last suspicion could only be underlined by a remnant of violence from his past. Eight years ago he was sent off in a group game in the World Cup finals in Marseilles which he eventually came to dominate with a two-goal performance against Brazil in the final in the Stade de France. He turned viciously on a Saudi Arabian opponent, as he did on Materazzi last night. Later, the consensus was that the Saudi player had insulted Zidane's ancestors, a nomadic North African tribe.

Here last night there was no ready explanation for the moment that will besmirch the whole tournament, but there was one conclusion that was difficult to avoid; it was that as the fireworks exploded, as the pitch swiftly was coloured in silver, football had again failed to persuade its worst critics why it had in the course of its expansion conquered every corner of the world.

For the moment at least, the Italians, seemed blissfully unaware that their great triumph - and in basic football terms there was no questioning that it was - would forever be dominated by the moment when the game lurched into a moment of absolute breakdown.

Maybe they were slow to imagine some of the repercussions for a nation which is currently mired in one of the great scandals in the history of the game. Inevitably, some would draw the conclusion that notorious Italian football cynicism had had a part to play in the disgrace of one of game's greatest figures. If corruption is so rife in Italian football that either today or tomorrow some of its leading clubs are expected to be relegated following a massive inquiry into the subversion of referees and terrible influence peddling in the back corridors, how much of a reach would it have been for one of the national team to make a provocative remark to one of his most dangerous opponents?

That, of course, is speculation and the one reality is that Zidane didn't behave in the way that might be expected of someone who in his years in the game in France and then with the giants of Italy and Spain, Juventus and Real Madrid, has amassed great wealth. For whatever reason, Zidane snapped, and all that will emerge in the next few days will surely be by way of mitigation of a shocking offence.

The central act will not be so easy to defend. Zidane lost control and lost his destiny... he had also delivered a mortal blow to team-mates for whom he had become a figure of nothing less than reverence. Before the flashpoint it seemed that France had hold of the game, and that even the magnificent defiance of men like Italian captain Fabio Cannavaro and defender Gianluca Zambrotta was bound to crack. Indeed, it seemed that Zidane himself was involved in what seemed like a powerful portent of France's eventual triumph.

In extra time he played a pass to his friend, the full-back Willy Sagnol, out on the right, then moved with easy assurance to meet the cross that he knew would come. His header was brilliantly timed and placed. And it brought from goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon a colossal save.

That was the Zizou of football dreaming, poised, masterful, a tall, elegant genius capable of moments of superb inspiration.

And then there was the other Zidane, the recluse, the carrier of passion and perhaps some resentment from a tough upbringing in the grim housing project of his youth in the poor quarter of Marseilles. And so, Zidane went, with appalling suddenness, into the darkest night of his life and, also, desperately, one of football's.