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Was video evidence used to ‘convict’ the world’s greatest player in the world’s biggest fixture? That is the question I find myself asking the more I think about the 2006 World Cup Final.

The best player in the world? That was Zinedine Zidane. He’d won that title three times. He also won the World Cup with France, in Paris in 1998, and the European Championship two years later. He helped Juventus to two successive European Champions League finals and became the world’s most expensive player when he joined Real Madrid for 76 million euros. He scored the winning goal when the Spanish club won the Champions League. It was a remarkable career and it was to have an extraordinary conclusion.

In May 2006 he announced that he would retire after that year’s World Cup. So, when his beloved France reached the Final, it meant that the finest footballer on the planet was going to play his last competitive match in the globe’s biggest game. Nobody of his stature had ever chosen such a prestigious stage for his last bow. But, on the day, he made his exit as the villain, sent off for violent conduct. What an incredible story.

Yet is the full story even more intriguing? Like many others in refereeing circles, I cannot help wondering whether the officials used video technology against Zidane in Berlin’s Olympiastadion on 9 July 2006. If I had been the referee or the Fourth Official in those precise circumstances, then I would have wanted to get it right. And if that meant using a TV replay to check what had happened, so be it. Did the men in charge of the match do that? Has technology already been used in the world’s most important fixture?

What we can say for certain is that if ‘Zizou’ had been able to control his temper as well as he could control a football then none of this would be an issue. If he had been able to keep his head, instead of using it as a weapon, he might well have provided a much more fitting finish to his peerless career. He was the captain of France and there is a real possibility that he could have completed his playing days by lifting the World Cup. Instead, the last sight of him as a professional footballer was as he walked past the trophy on his way back to the dressing room after being sent off.

The 2006 World Cup Final pitched France against Italy and the two players who were to feature later in the most controversial confrontation each scored in the first 20 minutes. In fact, those two men, Zidane and Marco Materazzi, were both involved in the first goal, after seven minutes. It was Materazzi who fouled France’s Florent Malouda (although there was only the most minimal contact) and it was Zidane who converted the penalty to put France ahead.

Zidane being Zidane, the penalty was a bit special. As goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon sprawled to his right, expecting a normal, hard shot, Zidane chipped the ball and sent it forwards and upwards in a slow parabola. Buffon was already on the floor long before the ball lazily clipped the underside of the bar and bounced down. He clambered up, turned around, and grabbed the ball but there was no need for an Azerbaijani assistant referee to decide that it had clearly crossed the line.

Thirteen minutes later, Materazzi equalized, leaping two feet higher than his marker to head home an Andrea Pirlo corner, and it was still 1-1 after 90 minutes.

Fourteen minutes into extra-time, goalkeeper Buffon tipped a Zidane header over the bar, but the French captain’s next, and last, contribution to the beautiful game was a moment of ugly bad temper. Angered by something Materazzi said to him, Zidane head-butted the Italian defender in the chest. It was a belting butt. Materazzi went down like a felled tree. He was hurt, no doubt, but probably also stunned—and so was the watching world when TV showed the astonishing incident. But that didn’t happen straightaway. It was an off-the-ball clash and TV coverage was following the ball. So there was quite a lot of confusion until a replay of the incident made it apparent that Zidane deserved to be sent off.

There was confusion as well for the referee, Horacio Elizondo from Argentina. He had also been concentrating on the ball and hadn’t seen the head-butt. It is how he learned that Zidane deserved to be sent off that fascinates me. That is what is still discussed and debated in refereeing circles. But, for now, let’s just say that Elizondo did get the message and did show Zidane the red card. For me, watching at home, the sight of the best player I ever refereed walking back to the dressing room and passing the World Cup, where it stood on a plinth waiting for the presentation ceremony, was one of the saddest moments I can remember; sad for a player I admired so much and sad for football.

There were no more goals. So, for only the second time, the World Cup Final was decided by penalties. Materazzi took Italy’s second spot-kick, and scored. David Trezeguet, the man whose goal gave France victory over Italy in the Final of Euro 2000, was the only player not to score his penalty. His kick hit the crossbar, landed on the goal-line and bounced out. Again, no Azerbaijani assistant was needed. It was not a goal. Italy won the penalty contest 5-3, and with it their fourth World Cup.