Sydney: Italian defender Marco Materazzi has denied calling French soccer captain Zinedine Zidane a ‘dirty terrorist’, and his sister a prostitute, which reportedly led the latter into carrying out the infamous head-butting incident on Sunday's World Cup final.
France lost 3-5 to Italy, allowing the latter to win the event for the fourth time since the tournament first saw the light of day in 1930.
"It is absolutely not true, I did not call him a terrorist. I'm ignorant. I don't even know what the word means. The whole world saw what happened on live TV," Fox Sports quoted Materazzi as telling Italian news agency Ansa soon after the team's triumphant return to Rome.
For the past 48 hours, theories are flying around as to what exactly caused Zizou to angrily head-butt Materazzi during the closing stages of a tense, yet exciting final.
The Times, in London, went as far as to enlist to help of a lip reader.
"After an exhaustive study of the match video, and with the help of an Italian translator", the newspaper reported their man "read" Materazzi calling Zidane "the son of a terrorist whore", before adding, "So just f*** off".
Contrary to popular belief, Zidane's outburst is not out of character. During his 12-year-international career, he has been sent off 14 times for behavior unbecoming of the sport.
At the 1998 World Cup, he stomped on a Saudi Arabian opponent. Sitting out a two-match ban, he came back to score two goals against Brazil in the final.
Five years ago with Juventus, he head-butted an opponent in a Champions League match against Hamburger SV after being tackled from behind.
Meanwhile, a Paris-based anti-racism group SOS Racism, quoted well-informed sources as saying that Materazzi had used the word "terrorist" against Zidane. Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, was shown a red card after the incident.
SOS Racism called for an inquiry into the incident.
French television reported that Zidane would talk about the incident "in the coming days". Zidane reportedly told his agent, Alain Migliaccio, that Materazzi had said something very serious.
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