Wrong. His suspension that prevented him from playing against Togo resulted from two successive yellow cards from the first two games against Switzerland and Korea Republic. He only got one red card in the final versus Italy.
if you forget the headbutt incedent, then he had a very good tournment and you could agrue that he deserves it
i dunno. i think he had one truly great game and that was against brazil. he had two mediocre games in the group stage and was suspended for the 3rd. and, he played well against spain...and not so much against portugal. i just dont see how he couldve deserved this over cannavaro. cannavaro was a consistent presence in all of italy's games. he didnt have a single bad game and really and at times, was the best player on the whole field in italy's matches. i just wish the decision for golden ball was made after the game. the red card shouldve been taken into account, as well as cannavaro's stunning final 75 minutes. i guess my only explanation, if we ignore the red card, was that the media split their italian votes between cannavaro and buffon.
Zidane 2012 votes Cannavaro 1977 votes Pirlo 715 To me that is all the sportswriters that casted their votes before the half...
i was actually surprised pirlo was in 3rd place. maybe they were impressed with his amazing passes in the first half. hah. but yeah. i thought fifa were going to fix things after WC02 and the whole fiasco with Kahn winning it ahead of Ronaldo. instead, they pretty much keep it the same, only changing the voting from before the game to at the half.
????? What exactly crawled up your butt? On a more serious note, I'm actually surprised Buffon didn't get more attention in this. He had a great tournament, helped keep Italy in every game, made great saves a number of times and was consistent throughout. I think they gave it to Zizou out of respect for his career, but given the focus on fair play, seems like a wrong call to me. And the Portuguese -- when they were on their feet -- were entertaining. Still, they hardly deserve an award. They weren't even the most accomplished diving team in the tourney (although C.Ronaldo wins for least popular, so they would have an award...)
Whether or not he's had a shameful incident in his past is totally irrelevant. If it had been a perfectly squeaky-clean player who hadn't committed a foul throughout his entire career, but then did in the semi-final what Zidane did in the final, his chances would be dead in a flash. The fact remains that Zidane's transgression occurred in THIS tournament, and moreover, in FIFA's showpiece match that, given the prolifieration of TV & internet these days, was quite possibly the most-watched event ever in the history of broadcasting. Nobody's saying "he shouldn't get the award because he's committed some bad things in his past" - they're saying he shouldn't get it because of his behaviour at THIS tournament and in THIS final match. Because after all, that's what THIS award is supposed to be based on.
Actually although Portugal has their obvious problem on falling on the deck, I really think the best entertaining team should have been Germany, Portugal had lovely football but it was not entertaining with the drives that really turned me off. Germany was exciting for all the games except for the semi where they lack the usual punch. They score the most goals and attack, attack, attack as much as they could. That is very entertaining, but I am going off topic here. ZZ will return as a coach, I believe. He loves the game very much and has very good football mind. I always enjoyed his football prowless but strongly hate his dark footballing side. There is always two sides to the story, but there is no excuse to what he did at the final and other times. I hope he gets some decent therapy. However, his experience of the good and the bad sets him up the opening of an very good coach to the players in the future. I am sure he feels that he got much to give back to his country and the world, even though he doesn't need to. I am sure that he will get FIFA help in that direction. Sad that Cannavaro didn't get the golden ball award, what heck does the media know about football? Why don't the players vote for the player of the tournment or even the coaches vote, (a rule of not voting your countryman should see fair results) but why the media? Is there any justice in this world? Hang loose guys
I liked Maradona a lot.Football is not one man game,never was.And it's not only flashy dribling and goals.My reply was to the guy who said that Maradona won WC alone.Tell it to Pumpido,Brown,Valdano,Batista etc. And who the fcuk are you to judge my knowledge about football?
Forgive me if this has already come up, but I've been wondering... A. Does the fact that the Golden Ball was announced the following day after voting finished at halftime of the final (what I've heard) mean that FIFA implicitly approved of the journalists' decision and Zizou will retain the award? B. Or if not, and FIFA wanted to overrule a Golden Ball award and hand it to the runner-up, could they? Just hypothetically imagine if a player won the vote before halftime and then went on to commit some serious and violent foul deep into the game. And let's say FIFA's big PR pitch that year was for fair play. Might they take the bold, principaled step of awarding the prize to the guy in 2nd? C. Is there any precedent for this? Has any previous Golden Ball been anywhere near as controversial as this one?
I remember it was not as hard as the 2006 one. ZZ had to put his foot somewhere to keep his balance, unfortunately it was on an opp player (a bit like rooney, except that it was not intentional). The 2006 one is due to the enormous final match pressure and the incredibly misplaced words of materrazi (talking badly about his mother, being unfortunately very ill at that time).
well to insinuate that maradona only had about 2 good games in wc86 is retarded, he scored against italy, assisted and raped the defense against both korea, bulgaria and uruguay, scored against belgium and england and assisted against germany in the final. he either assisted or scored a goal in every single game (no pk:s) now compare zidane's tournaments in 98 were he didn't have a single assist or a single goal up to the final or this tournament when he had only 1 or 2 good games. noone has ever been close to dominate a tournament like maradona did in 86
It was way worse than Rooney. Here you will also see the CL headbut that broke that guy's cheekbone. http://multimedia.repubblica.it/home/331703?ref=hpmm
Thanks for the video, I forgot what the incident with the Saudi player looked liked and I was dying to see it again.