Ever since Adam was cast out of Paradise, in the Fall with a capital F, Man has had a fascination with the flawed fallen hero. There is Lucifer — the anti-hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost — who fell from his position as the greatest of the angels. And now there is Zinedine Zidane, the disgraced idol of the French football team, whose sending-off after a head-butt may have cost his nation the World Cup.

Much of the French media have turned on Zidane. Le Figaro deplored the “odious head-butt” and Le Parisien declared that “the blue angel has turned into a devil.” But many fans have forgiven him already, and President Chirac, no stranger to bad behaviour himself, told Zidane yesterday: “You are a virtuoso, a genius of world football. You are also a man of heart, of commitment and conviction. That is why France admires and loves you.”

M Chirac has a point. Flawed heroes are so much more fascinating than blameless ones. All the best tragedies contain them, from Othello to Macbeth to King Lear. Julius Caesar should have been renamed Brutus, since the autocrat’s assassin is the more interesting character. And sportsmen fill this stereotype perfectly. The drive that gives them the discipline to succeed can also breed aggression and a determination to win at any cost. Hence the drug scandals that brought heroes such as Ben Johnson crashing to the ground.

We find these stories far more satisfying than those of the flawless heroes who do no wrong. We need our Lancelots, our Tristans, our Lucifers. We are ready, perhaps too ready, to forgive the sins of the imperfect maestro, whose presence among us is more cinematic or operatic than real.