Zidane was butt defending principles by sticking one on Materazzi

LOOKING back on last week's World Cup final and that incident, it may surprise many to hear that I totally understand Zinedine Zidane's behaviour.

What is more. I respect him even more. My view is that those who provoke such situations should be punished, although it should be left to the referee to mete out the justice and not the player. That goes without saying. But it was not an ordinary situation with the great Frenchman.

We shouldn't look at it only from the point of view of how big the stakes were in this game. We should also look at the price the Italians ultimately paid for winning the World Cup.

Last week I was talking about how important it is that great players can control themselves. I want to say again that Zidane is a great player and a great personality. And I have to say that I admire people who defend their principles and don't stay silent when somebody insults them on the field.

I also think it's a terrible situation when a coach sets his players up to provoke, as some did in the World Cup; and it is awful when players follow these orders.

It is equally bad when the referee doesn't stop it and fails to do his duty and hand out punishment.

Which brings me once again to that infamous Hearts v Hibs game when Edgar Jankauskas was sent off. He got his second yellow card after reacting when a Hibs player kicked his legs from behind.

Why did the referee make a decision like that? The only response we have had is that the sunlight was too bright and he didn't see properly what was going on there.

I'm totally against behaviour like that from opposing players. I equate it with betrayal when they deliberately provoke and injure their colleagues. I see such behaviour as a sign of weakness and an admission that they lack the necessary skills and flair to win a game by fair means.

I simply will not accept situations when one footballer ends the career of another. So in this sense Italy has lost something though they have won the World Cup.

If he was available, and had decided not to retire, I would have no problem in signing Zidane. I'm sure he'd quickly help us in Scotland to reduce the quantity of provocation that we have during games.

It's a different matter when the player can't control his temperament off the field, with alcohol maybe. If we are honest, when we look at the Fernando Ricksen case, which of us didn't have a bit too much to drink when we were young?

And yet saying that, I understand why a coach will attempt to make sure something like that does not happen again. In the end, it is about a player's career, and football doesn't forgive things like drink scandals. So I see how the coach's strictness can only help Ricksen to control himself better and grow up professionally.

As for Cristiano Ronaldo, I would never buy a player who threatens his own club with a strike and, by using such methods, tries to get a move to somewhere like Real Madrid.

This is a very good chance for Real to see whose interests - the club's or his own - he sees as a priority. Ronaldo, it is clear, thinks only about himself.

Here at Hearts, like all other clubs, we face situations when players say they want to leave. Nothing unusual there, but in the cases of Webster and Skacel I suspect it is more the agents speaking than the players.

For the last six months, they have been listening to what agents promise them and then thinking about a move to some other club. My real fear is that they have not been performing properly and may not have been giving their all to bring the SPL title to Tynecastle.

We will see how this situation resolves itself, but already I think that by not playing with maximum effort they have jeopardised their chances of getting a move elsewhere.

The World Cup has gone now and I confess it has left me full of different emotions. One of the last positive impressions was of that great stadium in Berlin, a fabulous place for sporting events of any kind, but particularly a World Cup final.

It was really very useful for me to see the different grounds in Germany. I was dreaming about increasing the capacity of the Hearts stadium up to 70,000 or even 100,000 people, but I see now that when grounds are this big it is easy to lose the intimacy. That is why I returned home convinced that we should cap the Tynecastle capacity at around 40,000.

Taken from the Scotsman