Zinedine Zidane

Zidane's 1998 was the whole country in one summer: two headers in a World Cup final won at home, the Ballon d'Or after it, and a nation discovering that a kid from La Castellane, Marseille — the son of Algerian immigrants — was the best footballer France had ever produced. The game itself was a kind of slow violence: the ball arrived at his feet and time would drop a gear, defenders would arrive a beat late, and the wrong foot was always somehow the right one.

The Marseille turn, the 2002 Champions League final volley in Glasgow — possibly the finest goal ever scored in a final — and then Berlin 2006, where the last act of the greatest career of its generation was a red card for a headbutt. He walked past the trophy on the way down the tunnel, and it glinted. Even his ending was cinematic. His sport's gods are usually distant; Zidane's tragedy was that he was never anything but human.