The life of a professional sportsman is full of inane press conferences.
If you have been to even a few, you realise quickly that, save a few exceptions, it is almost always a regurgitated drill. A drill in which journalists in different countries somehow contrive to ask slightly differing versions of the same five questions and are then met with slightly different versions of the same five answers. And so on and on the carefully crafted machine spins.
It just so happened that four months after playing his last ever international match, Zinedine Zidane found himself in one such press conference.
It was November 2006 and barely a hundred days had passed since Zidane had famously ended his footballing career on the grandest stage of them all by headbutting the Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final in Berlin.
But Zidane was a long way from Europe's heady footballing capital on that day.
AFPA few thousand miles away, in fact, and sitting in the press room of the headquarters of Bangladesh Football Federation fielding questions from an ensemble cast of journalists for whom Christmas had come early.
You could have forgiven the great man from blinking twice to confirm reality because the incredible questions came thick and fast.
Did Zizou watch Indian football? He said no.
Would he want to coach the Bangladesh national team? Not really.
Who was better? Pele or Maradona? He was probably thinking ‘me'.
Who was better? Platini or him? Different players, different eras.
Did it make him happy to see Muslim countries doing well in football? I guess yes is the right answer?
The press conference was just as farcical as it sounds and to give it a further sense of strangeness, the cast itself was probably of the like that would never end up in a location like this together again. There was Franck Riboud, a Frenchman who was a senior executive of Danone, Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Laureate, and the federation's president SA Sultan who was a year away from an exit from his post. And then there was Zidane, easily the most famous footballer in the world in a pre-Messi and Ronaldo era.
“Zidane's visit will change the face of Bangladeshi football,” promised Muhammad Yunus and even then everyone knew it would really not. Most famous player in the world or not, this was just a corporate shindig – a retired pro cashing in a pay-day and some corporate suits banking in some clout in an emerging market that would hopefully yield good business results down the line. Honestly, you could recognize that and still enjoy the show.
Thus, when the one illuminating moment in this entire ephemeral event came about, it was a bit of a surprise.
“I want to do something for the children of Bangladesh,” said Zidane and of course it was easy to file that away under platitudes.
But over the next two days, Zidane put the money makers (his feet) where his mouth was.
