Chris Maume: Magical Zizou hypnotises on and off pitch

View From The Sofa: Zidane: a 21st century portrait in the hands of the gods BBC4/BBC3

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In 2005, 17 cameras stayed focused on Zinedine Zidane during the course of an entire Real Madrid game, at home to Villarreal. The resultant 90-minute montage, underpinned by haunting music from Mogwai (Glaswegian post-rockers, m'lud) was mesmerising and hypnotic.

Disconcerting at first, though: it feels like a brief sequence in a documentary or one of those arty passages in Goal! or one of the World Cup films. You keep expecting to go back to a talking head or for a narrator to break in. It's so strange not following the ball; it's like watching the backwash from a boat, but not the boat itself. But you settle in to appreciate how easy Zidane (below) was on the ball, how effortless he made it all look. Most of his contribution is the simple stuff, joining the dots in midfield with touches and lay-offs, but after Real go 1-0 down, the first bit of real ZZ magic, a run to the byline that takes out four defenders followed by a perfect cross, brings the equaliser. His expression is unchanged, as it is throughout the match – slightly preoccupied, as if he thinks he might have left the iron on.

Some of his pronouncements are brought up periodically in large subtitles – not the kind of stuff you hear much from footballers. "The game, the event is not necessarily experienced in real time. My memories of games and events are fragmented..." Or, "Sometimes I enter the stadium and it feels as if everything has been decided, Brian," (OK, he doesn't say "Brian").

Real take the lead, then near the end there's a bit of handbags. He runs a good 20 or 30 yards and piles in with a half-decent jab. David Beckham drags him away and has a word. The tension builds with a single-note organ crescendo as Zizou waits while the ref sorts things out.

Then a red card flashes. It's 2006 all over again, but the year before, if you know what I mean. Zidane's expression is static, still that slightly perturbed look as he exits to a standing ovation. His words flash up on the screen: "Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all. Nothing at all."

And that's the end, quite suddenly. Rumours that the makers are doing a sequel featuring Titus Bramble remain unconfirmed at the time of going to press.

And before Zidane there was Diego Maradona, who we've never forgiven over here for you-know-what. He's a hero to five English freestylers though, who decided, for their various reasons, that their mission in life was to obtain an audience with "Ol' Pigeon Chest".

Freestyle – glorified keepie uppie – has very little to do with the real thing, but it's entertaining to watch in a Covent Garden Piazza kind of way as the five lads attempt to busk and blag their way to Buenos Aires. As they duck and dive down the Americas from New York it becomes clear that they're all carrying emotional baggage from back home. For each of them this is, no contest, the most crucial event in their lives to date.

It's a road movie, really, like Ewan McGregor and his sidekick on their motorbikes but with a lot less back-up. The film is driven by the boys' anxiety and desperation, and when they only have enough cash to get two of them to Argentina, cracks start to show in the slightly intense relationships they've developed.

They draw lots, and three are left behind in Las Vegas, though Scouse Mike, the sharpest operator, also gets there in the end.

So three of them get to see Maradona for two minutes outside his house as he leaves for a flight to Peru. He signs their T-shirts, gives them a hug, says the privilege is all his. Woody, the de facto leader, weeps. It's all a bit sad, really. I wonder if it's changed their lives.

Ronaldo displays fine command of language

Nice to see Ronaldo's finally getting to grips with English footballspeak. "The lads did brilliant," he said after the goalless draw in Milan on Tuesday. Not bad, that bit of adverb avoidance, but I think he needs participle lessons from Alan Shearer. Every proper footballer knows it's "the lads done brilliant".