the city of Mexico /
The World Cup 2006 Keep your football memories. Seeing Ronaldo Nazario become the top scorer in the Cups, eliminating Mexico against Argentina with a great goal by Maxi Rodríguez and sending Zinedine Zidane off in the final are some of them, but on television he also remembers constellation of stars brought together by Televisa Deportes.
That panel included people like the aforementioned Zizou, Luis Figo, Fernando Redondo, Hugo Sánchez, Samuel Eto’o and a renowned Italian referee Pierluigi Collina, for whom working at Televisa was a “toothache”.according to an anecdote told by Toño de Valdés.
An awkward moment for Javier Alarcón with Pierluigi Collino
This was shared by the well-known communication specialist of the company Av. Chapultepec Collina was “put in the bullet” for Javier Alarcónthe head of the Sports Department at the time, because he refused to talk about the arbitrations in Germany in 2006, however illogical it may sound as the most famous whistleblower on the planet.
“Germany 2006 was the first World Cup to which Televisa invited international super personalities football to analyze matches, we had Zidane, Figo, Eto’o, they threw the house through the window. Among those guests was Pierluigi Collina, the referee,” De Valdés said on Yordi Rosado’s YouTube channel.
“Collina appears in front of everyone in the studio and tells Javier Alarcón in front of everyone: ‘I’m not here to talk about arbitration’. And we’re thinking ‘Then why are you coming?’ The man said: ‘I come to analyze the matches, not the referees’, imagine the world’s most famous referee saying that to you. He was a complicated guy, like Zidane,” he added.
Unpleasant experience with Zidane on Television
That final reference to Zinedine Zidane agrees with Javier Alarcón’s story about the Frenchwhose serious and unsmiling personality was quite an obstacle, along with his series of demands and refusing to even discuss the Mexican national team. In case you want to know what happened to Zizou on Televisa, here we leave it.
Pierluigi Collina’s anecdote is from 45:00