Majority of the French forgive Zidane for head-butt, poll finds

Paris - A majority of the French forgive Zinedine Zidane for head-butting Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final and believe he was the best player at the tournament, according to a poll published Tuesday in the daily Le Parisien.

The poll, which was conducted on Monday by the CSA research institute, found that 61 per cent of respondents forgave Zidane for his behaviour, while 27 per cent did not. In addition, 52 per cent of those asked said they understood his act, against 32 per cent who said they did not. Of the 800 people over the age of 14 contacted by the survey, 78 per cent agreed with the media representatives who voted the 34-year-old Zidane best player of the tournament. According to French media, Zidane will reveal in the next few days what Materazzi said to him that prompted the attack and which earned the French midfielder an expulsion in the 110th minute of the final, won by Italy in a penalty shoot-out. Materazzi has publicly denied calling Zidane a terrorist, as some media organs have reported. In a related development, the head of the human rights organization SOS Racism, Dominique Sopo, said Tuesday that it had demanded that FIFA punish players who made racist statements on the pitch, and in particular Materazzi. 'We can not ignore this kind of behaviour because we have seen for several weeks, several months, even several years, that football is poisoned by this kind of racist altercation between players (and) between players and the public,' Sopo told France Inter radio. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur