Zidane watched the Berlin sky, not thinking of anything, a white sky flecked with grey clouds lined with blue, one of those windy skies, immense and changing, of the Flemish painters. Zidane watched the Berlin sky over the Olympic Stadium on the evening of 9 July 2006, and felt the sensation, with poignant intensity, of being there, simply there, in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, at this precise moment in time, on the evening of the World Cup Final.
So begins Zidane’s Melancholy, a lyrical five-page reflection on Zinédine Zidane‘s dramatic exit from the 2006 World Cup final by the Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint that offers poetic/intellectual/philosophical twist on the event in Berlin 4 years ago.
Listen to Toussaint read an excerpt: