Materazzi: "What I said to Zidane was really stupid"

The former Inter Milan has detailed what happened between him and Zidane at the Olympiastadion in Berlin  in his new autobiography: "I decided to write a book about it because everyone kept asking me what I said to Zidane to get such a reaction. What I said was really stupid but my words didn't warrant such a reaction. In any neighbourhood - in Rome, Naples, Turin, Milan or Paris, you hear far worse things...".

Materazzi weant on to clarify: "What I said was in reference to his sister, not his mother, like I have read in some newspapers. My mother died when I was a teenager, when I was 15, so I would never have stooped as low as to insult his mother.

“I have never understood why that incident reached such levels of notoriety. The only thing I want to remember from that day were my goals", he continued. "Sometimes, in Italy, I meet fans on the street and they say to me: ‘Marco, you did well giving him that headbutt!’ And it makes me angry because... I was the one who was on the receiving end! But it shows just how strange it is that the story has been told and altered. It's no big deal, I don't resent it, and I never will”, he ended.