WASHINGTON, 15 July 2006 — The United States, where football is still a second-tier sport, was nonetheless fascinated by the saga of French star Zinedine Zidane and his fateful head butt in the World Cup final.

Some observers wasted no time in pointing out that Zidane’s head butt, paradoxically, raised football to a profile previously unknown in the land of basketball, baseball and footballs with pointed ends.

“His renown is at its highest level among soccer fans even if what happened creates some doubt and uneasiness,” American University health and sport promotion professor Pete Mehlert told AFP.

A San Jose Mercury News columnist wrote on Thursday: “I don’t know how long it will last and I don’t know if the soccer elite likes it but this is soccer’s moment in America, unexpected, raw but very real.”

Even the Los Angeles Times weighed in once Zidane finally broke his silence on Canal Plus of France after “speculation across the globe has focused on several possibilities” on the nature of invective from the Italian player, which Zidane told French television were “very personal” and concerned his mother and his sister.

The Los Angeles Times called Zidane a “fallen hero,” who “marked a bitter ugly end to the storied career” of an icon.

Professor Mehlert said “There are always incidents like this. We don’t know when a player is going to snap.”

The weekly magazine Sports Illustrated said, “We Americans are no strangers to trash talking ... but the idea is that both the talker and the target know that’s not personal.” Basketball star Michael Jordan was famed not only for his leaps, but also his expertise in verbal assaults.

In an epic style, the San Jose Mercury News said, “Zidane summoned his inner Mike Tyson providing us all with a brutally and beautifully American moment at the climax of the galaxy’s most-watched event.”

Tyson is well remembered in the United States for biting off a portion of opponent Evander Holyfield’s ear during a 1997 bout in Las Vegas.

Comments from official circles were few. When asked, Major League Soccer preferred to point to the numbers of US viewers: 17 million watched the July 9 match, twice as many as saw the 2002 final in Korea and aired at an inconvenient hour in the United States.