Another note about the petulant one… Can we call him petulant…? Is he petu…? With the following evidence, coupled with his final appearance you could say that.

In 2005 a documentary called ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’ (French: Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle) was made about Zidane, it was the idea of Glasgow born artist Douglas Gordon, who years before had seen ‘Football As Never Before’ (aka Fußball wie noch nie) which was a documentary about George Best.

In that original 1971 doc the filmmaker Hellmuth Costard followed Best around whilst he was playing in a match against Coventry. He had eight 16mm film cameras watching Best, in real time, for the course of the entire game.

Douglas Gordon took this same idea and with the help of Philippe Parreno, the Algerian-born French artist and filmmaker, they recorded Zinedine playing for Real Madrid in a match against Villarreal, again with multiple cameras watching him.

Ironically in the final minutes of that game Zidane was sent off after getting into the fight.
Below is the documentary, which you will see the Madrid ‘Galaticos’ from back then including Figo, (Fat) Ronaldo, Davey Becks and Roberto Carlos.

Additional notes for you football spotters: The final score of the documentary match was 2-1 to Real. The Villarreal team was being managed back then by Manuel Pellegrini, who is now the coach of Madrid – and in goal for them was one Pepe Reina.

The doc is via Google Video:

The Music…

There was a soundtrack to accompany the documentary, which was created by the Scotia band Mogwai (the sister of Jessica Simpson gave her baby the same name I think…;o). They were convinced to do the soundtrack by their fellow Glaswegian Douglas Gordon who played them some footage of the film with a remix of the track “Mogwai Fear Satan” playing in the background.
Gordon didn’t give any direction to the band as to what the album should sound like, thus giving some of the tracks an improvised feel.

I don’t know which remix Douglas Gordon used, so I’ve chosen one at random, plus the opening track from the soundtrack.

[See post to listen to audio] » Mogwai – Mogwai Fear Satan (Fcuk Buttons Remix) [See post to listen to audio] » Mogwai – Black Spider (soundtrack version)

Why does it always end with a big falling out and them leaving and moving as far away as possible.

Maybe even to another country…

This happened a couple of years ago when Rutgerus Johannes Martinus van Nistelrooij was the apple in Alex F’s eye.

But then a younger more attractive prospect arrived and soon became Fergie’s latest crush.

Little Ronn had become the darling of the play(training) ground. Everybody crowding around him, eager to be near this new pretty young thing.

Big Ruud saw this and that Fergie was constantly watching ‘ickle Cristian and not him anymore… Ruudi didn’t like this. Ruud was getting angrier and angrier.

Near to the end of the season he was told to sit on the park bench and look at whilst everybody else got to play a game.

And then one day…

Via Wikipedia:

“On 9th May 2006, Setanta Sports reported that van Nistelrooy’s exclusion from the squad was due to a training-session fight between him and teammate Cristiano Ronaldo. Van Nistelrooy allegedly criticised Ronaldo’s tendency to hold onto the ball instead of passing to his teammates, which sparked the fight, after which van Nistelrooy remarked, “Go crying to your daddy.” The article claimed that this was not a reference to Ronaldo’s father (who had died earlier in the season), but to United’s Portuguese assistant coach, Carlos Queiroz.

For the final game he was told that he would still be benched, forced to watch all the others and that was it. He took his ball and stomped off in a huff.

Soon after he packed his bags, flew off to Madrid and has never been seen in or near Manchester ever since.

It wasn’t the first time that AlexF had fallen out with his BFF, it had happened many years before. This time it wasn’t with a one trick pony who was good with the free kicks, it was with an out and out front performer who liked to knock them in.

But as we saw with last season, Ruudi has all been forgotten about now thanks to Fergie’s latest squeeze.

» Tune about Ruud sung in Dutch (it isn’t SteMcL singing though). I hope it isn’t actually rude:

[See post to listen to audio]
» Jan the Frallan – The Ruud van Nistelrooy Song