Zizouuuu and Yohjiiii for Y-Threeee!!!!

From: Godfrey Deeny

1. The only footballer who lost weight after he retired: the maverick Zinedine Zidane. Photography: Godfrey Deeny

2. Zinedine Yazid Zidane, the most gifted footballer of the decade that just ended, living French icon and tough guy meets athletic artist, has got himself a new career – model. This man who won pretty much everything there was to win – World Cup and European Championships for France, the Intercontinental Cup in Italy with Juventus and the Champions League in Spain with Real Madrid’s Galacticos. He is also beginning his fashion model career at the top level; appearing in the latest campaign for Y-3, the high-powered link-up between Japanese design great Yohji Yamamoto and German mega sports brand adidas.
   
   Achtung caught up with Zizou, as the French prefer to call him; for a half hour rap on footie, fashion tastes, footballers′ vanity, Thierry Henry’s infamous World Cup qualifying assist for France and introducing video referees into the Beautiful Game.
   
   Zidane, actually appeared with Yohji last September in Manhattan Park Avenue Armory on the Y-3 catwalk, but just to take two mock penalty kicks with a silver ball with his Japanese buddy.
   
   “It was sympa,” smiled Zidane, using the French term for cool. “It’s not the first time I’ve been watched playing with a ball. But it was a new way to perform for me,” laughed Zidane, at an unveiling of the fall 2010 collection of Y-3 in Paris.
   
   In a quiet way, Zidane was also a style leader in France, their equivalent of David Beckham, Kaka or Andriy Shevchenko.
   
   “Yes, I had a role to play there; and I did it. I held my ground,” smiles Zizou, whom, among his many positions, is a global ambassador for adidas.
   
   Over 18-year his career, Achtung wondered, which players did Zidane recall spent the most time getting dressed after a game?
   
   Declining to name any names, Zidane responds: “Some guys did look at themselves in the mirror many times. But many other people do too. Anyway, that’s part of a player’s role.”
   
   How does Zizou see the link between football and fashion?
   
   “Sport and fashion are clearly connected, especially with adidas and Yohji, in the sense that you can be athletic, yet also class at the same time. That’s the sense of the Y-3 brand, I find,” he argues.
   
   Unlike many footballers, whose weight balloons up after retirement, Zidane has actually lost weight since he quit the playing field, losing one kilo to fall to 81. Yet, this 1.86 meter tall, 37-year-old gent insists: “I generally wear black, because it gives me a good line! Makes me look thinner!”
   
   Zidane continues to live in Spain, enjoying the “high quality of life,” and keen that his four sons, “continue in the same schools.” Besides lots of charity work, Zidane is also an advisor to Real Madrid on sporting matters, and he makes clear the club’s interest in hiring the most explosive current French player Franck Ribery away from his present club Bayern Munich. “That’s not just my hope, it’s also the hope of many people at Real,” he stresses.
   
   In person, Zidane is reserved, speaks very quietly and is almost painfully keen to protect his privacy. When asked where he goes on holiday, he replies, “a little everywhere,” when queried about his favorite restaurants, he responds: “I like Asiatic cooking, after that I like what my wife cooks or what my mum cooks. As you can see, I don’t eat a huge amount.”
   
   Style wise, his watch is an IWC, his car an Audi and wardrobe, “anything from a 10-year-old shirt to a jacket by a grand couturier.”
   
   Looking ahead to this summer’s World Cup, Zidane predicts that, “the favorite must be Spain. I hope France will figure somehow. Precisely, because their qualifying was so complicated, their finals cannot be worse. That’s why they might do very well. I will go to South Africa at the beginning of the World cup for a little… and maybe a little at the end.”
   
   Talking about France’s qualification, one wonders if Zidane is in favor of a video technology, given that the French only got through thanks to a double hand ball by striker Thierry Henry, missed by the referee but seen worldwide by a huge global audience? The headline in French sports daily L’Equipe even read: “Main de Dieu,” or Hand of God, comparing Henry’s goal to Diego Maradona’s famous handled score against England in the 1994 World Cup.
   
   “I agree that some day we will have to use video referring. But I believe that you can only have it the penalty area, and not all over the field, for each foul or dispute. Because then a game would take three hours and we would steal something from the intrinsic beauty of football. But for goals where there is a real dispute, I believe that one day we will use video. It’s clear that those in power in FIFA have decided that they won’t have video. But the next generation who controls football will introduce it.
   This time, Ireland was the team that had the bad break, but next time it could be France.”

3. courtesy haeberlein & mauerer berlin