It's exactly ten years to the day that Zinedine Zidane bowed out of football in the most controversial circumstances with that infamous red card in the World Cup final.
What Marco Materazzi actually said to Zidane to get headbutted has always been in question, we knew it was some slur about the female members of Zidane's family:
I decided to publish a book about this event because everyone asked me what I had said him to react like that. My words were stupid but they did not deserve that reaction. In any neighbourhood of Rome, Naples, Turin, Milan Paris, I would hear much more serious things.
I talked about his sister not his mother, like I have read in some newspapers. My mother died while I was a teenager, I would never insult his.
Materazzi's mother died when he was 15.
It's strange that he waited this long to talk about it, and reveal what he said. It's perhaps forgivable given the time that has gone by that the former Everton defender forgets his exact words.
