Gelsenkirchen, Germany. June 16, 2006.

Designers from seven countries submitted 53 proposals. The winning concept came from Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga.

The 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden was never meant to belong to France. Talented though they were, they were not considered an unstoppable force on football’s grandest stage. Yet, by the end of that tournament, they had become one, and at the heart of it stood Just Fontaine.

In the early 1950s, across Europe’s green carpets, Hungary were not merely a football team. They were devoted practitioners of the art of football. The eleven men on the field seemed to move according to the sheet music of an invisible orchestra. The world knew them as the “Magic Magyars.” When the ball was at their feet, it felt as though a master poet was arranging his finest verses.

Like the heroes of ancient Greek tragedies -- triumphant, revered, yet ultimately undone by a single moment of human weakness -- the night of July 9, 2006 at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium felt like a modern retelling of a timeless drama. And at the centre of it stood one man: Zinedine Zidane, both the story’s unrivalled hero and its tragic villain.