End of a journey nonpareil

Tom Humphries reflects on the life and dramatic times of Zinedine Zidane - and on the possibility of the ultimate final act

Way back in 2001 in Paris a friendly game between Algeria and France was played. With France leading 4-1 the game had to be abandoned because of pitch incursions by Algerian supporters, who made up 70 per cent of the attendance.

The incursions weren't ill-humoured or violent, and those who ran onto the field have to be judged in the context of the joy such recognition brought to the more than four-million French people of Algerian descent whose favoured scion was wearing the number 10 of France that night. The game between the reigning world and European champions and lowly Algeria had been possible only because of the status of one man, Zinedine Zidane.

Once upon a time when they had come to France looking for work or for peace or for some start to life, they had been dismissed as Pieds-noirs, or "Black-feet". Now they were in the Stade de France to honour a man whose name had been projected onto the Arc de Triomphe the night after the 1998 World Cup final. Merci, Zizou, the words had said.

Giving their old colonists the gift of a wonderfully iconic footballer didn't end the journey for the Algerians but it was a moment of change. An Algerian centre stage in French public life when his four-million compatriots had yet to see a member of parliament who looked like them or stood for them.

For Zidane it was poignant that the night in Paris should end that way. He had spoken before the game of how even though he would be wearing the French jersey the heart beating beneath the fabric would be yearning for a draw.

The game was played at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, a little piece of Paris which has a special place in Zidane's heart, and not just for the two goals he scored there in 1998 to win the World Cup for France.

Zidane was born 19 years after his Algerian father, Smail, arrived in France in 1953. When Smail reached France he moved into a tiny flat just behind where the Stade de France now sits. At the time there were just woodlands, hilly plots and ruined houses there.

"That was where my father lived," Zidane has said. "My mother showed me a picture of him from those days, an old, yellow, black-and-white photo. My father was young back then."

Indeed. Smail was 17 when he arrived. He worked the buildings in Paris for a few years before moving southward to Marseille, that little piece of North Africa that occupies a corner of France.

He got a job as a night watchman for a supermarket. He married Malika and had five children: Jamel, Farid, Nourredine, Lila and the youngest, Yakid, or as he is known to everyone except his family and friends, Zinedine or Zizou.

They grew up in La Castellane, which is as efficient a way as any of saying that times were tough and hard. In the summers the children would often be dispatched to Algeria for minding. They'd return for schooling when the time came.

La Castellane bred them tough. A scout at one of Zidane's games in his early teens had concerns about the boy's apparent placidity. The concerns grew when he saw the young Zidane scythed down in a vicious tackle and fail to respond in any way other than standing up and brushing himself down to permit the game to go on.

As the game progressed the scout was bemused to see Zidane stroll slowly across the width of the pitch, locate his assailant, place a hand on each of his shoulders and stretch him out with a headbutt.

La Castellane: When Zinedine won the World Cup for France, Adidas stuck up massive posters which depicted the grey, crumbling high-rise the Zidanes lived in. "Everybody Comes From Somewhere" was the legend. Take it as read that Jean-Marie Le Pen wasn't charmed.

Growing up, Zizou was interested in two things: football and judo. Football first, judo some way behind. And, says his mother, occasionally skateboarding, although it is hard to imagine so intense and so humble a young man ramping it up on the concrete outside the high rise.

His weekend job was to be a bellboy at the glorious, sunlit Stade de Velodrome in Marseille with its gorgeous elliptical stands on either side. Other kids worshipped the goalscorers. Zidane always gave homage to the playmakers. He loved the number 10s, two in particular.

On the occasion of his 12th birthday Zidane was ballboy in the Velodrome when France played Portugal in the semi-final of the European Championships of 1984.

Those were a memorable few weeks when Michel Platini appeared to be on a personal mission to prove to Eamon Dunphy that he was a great player, not just a good player. Zidane, crouched in the Velodrome that day, needed no persuasion. He watched Platini score the winning French goal and pull the strings.

Platini he adored. But that love was superseded by his devotion to Enzo Francescoli, the Uruguayan who wore the number 10 jersey for Marseille then. Zidane would watch him and study him every time Marseille played. He fell in love with the scheming, with the art of the unexpected.

When Zidane's first child was born he called him Enzo. At Juventus they assumed it was a gracious tribute to Enzo Ferrari. Zidane had to explain: Enzo Francescoli, number 10.

Years later, in 1996, Zizou faced Francescoli in Tokyo in an Intercontinental Cup game. When the final whistle blew he ran like a child to the Uruguayan to make sure he got to swap shirts with his idol.

Zizou rose swiftly as he went from boyhood to manhood. From his boys club Septemes, he went to Cannes, where alleged misgivings about the signing of an Arab were offset by the invitation of a club director, Jean Claude Elineau, for Zidane to move out of the trainees' dormitory he shared with 20 others and come and live in the Elineau family home.

At Cannes his genius and modesty both became evident very quickly. Stunned just short of his 17th birthday to be picked for the first team, he sent the pay cheque intact home to La Castellane.

When he scored his first league goal the club rewarded their prodigy with a small, red Renault Clio, which Zidane drove delightedly up and down La Croisette in Cannes as if it were a Porsche.

Inevitably he moved on. If you are a Bohs fan you might have caught him in this period with Bordeaux. Perhaps not the 5-0 defeat in Bordeaux in 1993 but perhaps the Intertoto Cup game in Dalymount two years later when Zidane swung a free kick from 25 yards into the net via the post while Dave Henderson, having assumed the kick was indirect, failed to move.

Bordeaux went on to claim a Uefa Cup, a remarkable achievement for such a small club and one which inevitably lost them their leading light.

The rest is history and headlines. Marcello Lippi, who manages Italy tomorrow night, brought Zidane to Juventus, where he was an integral part of the revolution whereby Lippi had brought the moribund old club back to life.

The Italians have always admired Zidane's quiet leadership, and at the 1998 World Cup, Cesar Maldini, the Italian manager, noted he would give "five players to have Zizou in my squad".

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Zidane's displays in the latter rounds are fondly remembered. But what is often forgotten is his ugly foul on Al Shahrani, the Saudi Arabian on whom he stamped on in the first-round game, bringing a two-match suspension on himself. Zidane said afterwards the Saudi captain had made a slur against the Kabyles, the Muslim nomads of North Africa from whom Zidane is descended.

Whatever the motivation, Zidane's retribution almost cost France dearly. The next game for France was unimportant, but the second-round game with Paraguay was different and the French struggled, needing an extra-time goal from Laurent Blanc to squeeze through.

That temperament, especially in games where his desire is great, has proven to be his one hint of an Achilles heel. Back in 2000 he was sent off in successive Champions League games for Juventus. The second red was for headbutting the Hamburg player Jochen Kientz after a bad tackle. Some things never change.

By the time Francehad added the European Championship of 2000 to the trophy cupboard there was only one club left in Europe which could afford to add Zidane to its trophy team.

Florentino Perez, the president of Real Madrid, waved the chequebook.

"There are," Perez announced, "some men who were born to play for Real Madrid. Zidane is one of them."

And with his Spanish wife, Veronique, keen on the move and the money irresistible to Juventus, Zidane was quickly in the Bernabeu with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Real Madrid one suspects, exhausted him. They made him rich when they paid Juve £47 million for him and he is still, post-Abramovich, the world's most expensive player, but the expectations of the Bernabeu and the sensation of always being stretched on the rack of Real's marketing machine sapped the best from him in latter years.

No sooner had he arrived there than he was the star turn for a friendly in Egypt. Zidane's image was to drive Real's marketing campaign in Arab countries just as the acquisition of Beckham was to open up similar opportunities in Asia a couple of years later.

The later years at Real have been somewhat sad, playing in a team of overpaid galacticos who know everything about percentages and nothing about passion.

His finest moment in the white shirt was in the European Champions League final of 2002 and the exquisite second-half volley that beat Bayer Leverkusen: a goal only Zidane could have scored.

Regardless of what tomorrow night brings, his legend will be intact. What France achieved in 1998 was sufficient to ensure that. The follow-on two years later ensured Zidane would be remembered as one of the greatest players ever.

This summer in Germany, though, dragging an ailing, quarrelling team and a beaten-docket manager through their duties until they located some spark of joy, has been his coup de grâce.

On Wednesday there was curious resignation about Portugal once they conceded the penalty and saw who was going to take it. They remembered perhaps the game six years ago at the European Championship in Rotterdam, when Zidane had the last kick of the penalty shoot-out to send France through. Seeing who was walking up to take the kick, Luis Figo took off his jersey and began looking toward the dressing-room. When the chips are down, when every card has been dealt, there is nobody more reliable than Zidane.

Whatever about Cesar Maldini's wish, it is fair to say if Zidane were playing for Italy tomorrow night there would be no question as to the outcome. It is his heart beating beneath the French crest which offers his side a chance to achieve something truly extraordinary.

What a stroll into the sunset it would be. Perhaps the greatest final act the game has ever seen.

Zidane's dark features, his furrowed brow and his sly smile will be missed. He has been the face of Adidas, of Lego, of Christian Dior, of Unicef, and of France's anti-racism campaign.

But he has also just been the face of excellence, the face of quiet perspective in a football world gone crazy. The sheer beauty of his football has unknotted the ugliest hearts. The humility of his personality has been a lesson to every kid.

He once answered yes to a question as to whether or not he thought he was at the peak of his art. Immediately he apologised. It wasn't art, it was a game - and it wasn't for him to say. Only Zidane.

When the 1998 World Cup final was held in Saint-Denis, Smail and Malika and Zizou's brothers and sisters stayed behind in Marseille.

They went to La Castellane to be with friends and to babysit Zizou's two sons (he now has four boys).

"Too nervous to watch," they said, and indeed they were. Smail sat on the grass dangling his six-month-old grandson on his knee and bulletins came to him from indoors of his youngest son's exploits.

The immigrant who lived in a one-room flat in the old Saint-Denis sat and cried.

Everyone comes from somewhere but some journeys are more sentimental than others.