[commish]

THis was a classic lesson in Sports Psychology 101. Get inside your opponents head and make him make mistakes. Zidane failed with flying colors.

Every sport on earth has trash talk, it is up to the competitors to tune it out and play the game. That is what champions are made of.

[soccer_maniac]

video clip of the incident

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1i_l0OeeMc

[Alberta's Child]

I once played hockey with a guy who previously played in the same amateur league in New York City as Tim Robbins (the actor, who's a pretty serious hockey fan).

Whenever his team played Robbins' team, this guy's job was to chase Robbins all over the ice and make rude comments about Susan Sarandon until Robbins lost his cool and ended up in the penalty box. Listening to him describe the chain of events was one of the funniest experiences of my hockey career . . .

"Hey, Timmy . . . When you see Susan tonight tell her I had a great time."

(no response)

"Hey, Timmy . . . You better quit now and get home to Susan as fast as you can tonight, or I'm gonna get there first."

(no response)

"Hey, Timmy . . . If I go over your house one more time and there ain't enough bags to cover that ugly b!tch's head while I'm #%&#ing here, I'm gonna beat the sh!t outta you!"

(Robbins turns around and slashes him with his stick, then gets sent to the penalty box for a five-minute major penalty. My friend's team scores the winning goal with Robbins in the penalty box.)

You can't make this up. LOL!

[Ax]

I'd like to see the transcript of some serious Croquet trash-talking.