Zidane's Headbutt. The highlight of the 2006 World Cup.

It's definite that Materazzi insulted Zidane. Although Materazzi maintains that he did not call Zinedine Zidane a terrorist (Zidane's ethnic Algerian), Channel News Asia reported that a lip reading expert from The Times said that he called Zidane a "son of a terrorist whore" followed by an expletive. BBC however reported that another lip reader said Materazzi said "I wish and ugly death to you and all your family", followed by "go fuck yourself".

Damn, if these lip readers are right, Materazzi must have taken speech lessons from Osama Bin Laden. He talks like a terrorist on CNN. All that's missing is a reference to "fleas on a camel's behind".

My World Cup 2006 wrapup... this world cup was marred by bad referee-ing. The Rooney red card, the other red cards and all the penalties... were accompanied by extremely bad timing (or extremely good if you were taking kickbacks from the other side). These tended to simply hand the game over to the other team, rather than have the effect FIFA intended ie. making it fairer.

I think football could learn some lessons from other top sports. NFL American football and NBA basketball for instance, use trial by video. If there's any doubt at all, the referees stop the game for a couple of minutes and review the videos. Formula 1 delays the punishment so that cooler minds prevail and the race steward has time to analyse the videos and car telemetry. And only after weighing all the facts and also the implications to the race overall, they penalise by imposing a drive-by or stop-and-go penalty a few laps later.

Football, on the other hand, favours on-the-spot decisions by cock-eyed referees standing 50 meters away. Never mind that a penalty for what was obviously a feign, with only 2 minutes of extra time remaining, practically means that the referee decides who wins.