Zinedine Zidane has not left Paris since last Friday, and the opening ceremony where he played a small role in the introductory video, before being one of the torchbearers of the Olympic flame at the end of the evening.
On Wednesday, the French football legend decided to take a little trip to the Arena Paris Sud, to see the two new nuggets of French table tennis, Félix and Alexis Lebrun, in action. But this “divine” appearance almost brought bad luck to the Blues.
Felix Lebrun got away with it
Accompanied by his wife Véronique, Zinedine Zidane arrived in the stands while Félix Lebrun was leading three sets to zero against Dimitrij Ovtcharov. The match started to go badly, and the tenacious German came back to three sets all, and even led 7-5 in the deciding set. Pushed by the French public, and therefore by “Zizou”, Félix Lebrun managed to finish strong to win (11-9, 15-13, 12-10, 8-11, 3-11, 8-11,11-7).
The French prodigy (17 years old) thus reaches the quarter-finals, unlike his brother Alexis who was beaten in the process. But the duo will continue to increase their popularity rating. Everyone came to tell me after the match that he was there, it was really nice, Félix Lebrun told L’Equipe about Zidane. An NBA basketball player posted a message on social media (“The Lebrun brothers are electric,” tweeted American point guard Tyrese Haliburton). That means that everyone is interested in table tennis. It’s beautiful to watch, I think people enjoy it, it can make people want to play ping pong.” And it continues this Thursday with the quarter-finals.
