French footballer Zinedine Zidane delighted thousands of Bangladesh villagers by agreeing to take part in an impromptu game of football.
BANGLADESH: French superstar footballer Zinedine Zidane delighted thousands of Bangladeshi villagers on Tuesday with an impromptu show of his legendary skills.
Zidane was on a visit to the village of Kamar Basulia near the capital Dhaka to meet former beggars who had transformed their lives through tiny loans from Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’s pioneering Grameen Bank.
“He is my hero. I never thought I would see him in my own village. I still cannot believe this is happening,” 16-year-old schoolboy Zakir Hossain said as he watched Zidane play from a tree top. Zidane, who is on a two-day visit to the Muslim-majority country at Yunus’s invitation, was showered with flowers by the villagers. Some 10,000 people turned out to watch him play. “I am completely taken aback,” Zidane, a Muslim, said. “I never thought that people living thousands of miles away in small villages here in Bangladesh would know who I am. I am stunned by the affection that people here have shown me.”
He said he hoped that football would thrive in Bangladesh and pledged to play a role in developing it.
“Football is a European game and that’s why European football is better than Asian (football). But
I believe that if the Asian nations try hard they can narrow the gap,” he said, speaking in French through an interpreter.
“I will be happy to help football in Bangladesh. I hope that the organisers will also try hard to lift the standard of football in Bangladesh. If the boys work hard, have a plan and the organisers do their part, then football here will one day reach top level,” he added.
The retired Zidane, seen as a sporting legend in the football-crazy south Asian country, later played in an exhibition match between under-16 teams at Dhaka’s national stadium.
The match, in which he wore the strips of the country’s two leading teams, was watched by around 30,000 spectators and shown live on the private Ntv television channel to an estimated audience of around 25 million. On Wednesday, he is to officially open a factory project run by French food giant Danone and Grameen Bank at a ceremony in Dhaka.
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