Zidane+Materazzi=Love

For some 24 hours, the greatest mystery surrounded the issue of Zidane's head-butt to Materazzi's chest, which happened during the final of the World Cup yesterday, 9 July. Everybody was saying that Materazzi must have mumbled something really nasty to have pissed off a gentleman like Zidane that badly.

There were all sorts of rumors coming out of the rumor mill about the incident. One that was made by the Brits and that was denied almost immediately told of a racist remark, depicting Materazzi as calling Zidane a "dirty terrorist". But as I said, that one didn't turn out to be true.

There were also rumors coming out of the French camp about Materazzi having said something very bad about Zidane's mother. Something in the order of "Hey, I screwed your mother. It was great."

However, nobody knew for sure about that one, although I must say it seemed to be the most plausible rumor. Ultimately, that one was also denied by a very embarrassed Italian side, who said that the statement was only "partially" correct, but refused to say what part of it was actually wrong.

As this only added to the ever-growing mystery and shifted the world's focus on Zidane's sister instead, various international TV channels actually brought in lip-readers to try to see what was said during the exchange. This had now become the hottest news item on earth in the last few days or so - hotter than the war in Iraq, hotter than Bush's latest twist of the tongue.

The mystery has now been solved as announced on world media a few minutes ago. Besides benefiting from the relief factor of the story's denouement, we were shown once again that all the rumors were false. Or almost.

According to what they said, what Materazzi exactly told Zidane was "Hey, I drew a cartoon of your mother. It was great."