Zidane

I had two days off work at the end of last week. The health situation had got to the stage where I went to my boss and asked for two days sick leave, it seems bizarre really giving notice of being sick but as I told him "I didn't want to phone up and offer a lie, particularly in view of my visit to the Doctors." Anyway we had quite a good chat about things and I said that I was probably reacting to what I saw as 'closure' - the meeting we'd had previously which resulted in my meeting the staff. I have a bit of a reputation in our office for speaking my mind and I think he appreciated the fact that I had spoken to the staff rather than leaving it dangling in the air.

That was Wednesday morning. On Wednesday evening it occurred to me that I was neglecting 'me time' - not the selfish moments spent on the computer but time spent doing those things that for some reason or other I'd stopped doing. Listening to music, watching movies - the things that I enjoyed as an individual, not as a manager, husband or father - the official duties of life if you like. So I decided to out that right on Thursday.

On Thursday morning Janis and I went down to the beach at Southbourne, I took some photographs, we walked, talked and then went to the Bistro on The Beach for brunch. The Bistro is one of those restaurants that regularly appears in the end of year lists in the colour supplements. It's one of the few places between Hengistbury Head and Sandbanks where you can actually sit in a restaurant and look out to sea, that sounds slightly weird but the coastline there isn't designed for buildings, unless you put them on the cliff and spend the next twenty years watching them edge ever closer to the....edge. Anyway we spent almost two hours just sitting, talking, eating, drinking (nothing alcoholic) and looking out on the calm English Channel. When we got home I watched the film Zidane, hence the photograph above.

I usually take the quotes on DVD or film posters with a pinch of salt, there have been enough examples of one mans classic being another man's torture to know that we all have different ideas of what makes a great film, this however is the exception that proves the rule. This film is truly extraordinary. It's extraordinary for so many reasons: it was filmed using 17 cameras and a crew of 150 at one match (Real Madrid v Villarreal in April 2005), you only see Zidane with the ball for about a minute out of the 85 odd that he is on the pitch, he only smiles once during the match and says barely a dozen words. For those people who watch football on Sky there used to be an interactive feature called PlayerCam, this gave the viewer the chance to watch a player for fifteen minutes before the service switched to another player. The film Zidane reminded me a little of the time I used the PlayerCam facility to watch Pedro Mendes playing for Tottenham away to Notts Forest and Mendes touched the ball once, the rest of the time he ran across an invisible line between defence and half way line deterring the opposition from trying to pass through or round him.

With Zidane the movie two things struck me, firstly the level of concentration on Zidane's face is unbelievable, the second is that it reinforces the notion that the Real Madrid side of the 'Galacticos' era really was a team of two halves - the Spanish under King Raul Gonzalez and the others. This latter impression comes to a head when, on one of the rare occasions that we see the ball at Zidane's feet, Real Madrid equalise (they eventually win 2-1). The goal is the result of Zidane going past three defenders before crossing to Ronaldo at the far post to head in, Zidane is mobbed by big Ronnie, David Beckham, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos and Walter Samuel - Raul, Guti and Pavon are conspicuous by their absence.

The movie took nearly three years to plan, the time spent trying to convince Zidane that covering only one match was a good thing, as he said himself 'If I'm injured after five minutes the film is over.' As it is Zidane lasts until nearly five minutes from the end when he can't resist running thirty yards to get involved in a punch-up and gets a red card. I couldn't help thinking at that point that he was trying to prove a point to the directors, it's as if he was saying 'I'm the one who is in charge' but maybe I'm being too cynical.