Football Career
Lizarazu (nicknamed "Liza"), of Basque descent, has been capped 97 times for France (for the first time on 14 November 1992 against Finland), scoring two goals, and helped them win the 1998 FIFA World Cup and Euro 2000. He has won six Bundesliga championships with Bayern Munich, as well as five German Cups, the Champions League, and the Intercontinental Cup. During his second spell with Bayern Munich in 2005 and 2006, Lizarazu wore the shirt number 69. Clarifying that it wasn't a lewd gesture, he said this was because he was born in 1969, his height is 1.69 m and he weighed 69 kg.
Before moving to Germany, Lizarazu played for Girondins de Bordeaux, where he played in the 1996 UEFA Cup Final against Bayern; and Athletic Bilbao. He said he would leave Bayern in the 2004 offseason, and eventually signed with Olympique Marseille. However, six months after signing with Marseille, he returned to Bayern Munich in January 2005.
He has been threatened by the Basque terrorist group, ETA, alleged for not giving money to the organization, what the terrorists called the "revolutionary tax". He also has a stadium named after him in the French Basque Country, the "Stade Bixente-Lizarazu" (former "Belcenia Stadium"). His fiancée was French singer and actress Elsa Lunghini for seven years and he has a son named Tximista with his ex-wife Stéphanie. He has a daughter named Uhaina with French actress and singer Claire Keim.
Lizarazu announced his retirement from football on 30 April 2006 – four days after former teammate Zinedine Zidane. However, he did subsequently make one appearance for Middlesbrough in August 2006, participating in Robbie Mustoe's testimonial alongside Curtis Flemming.
Read more about this topic: Lizarazu
Famous quotes containing the words football and/or career:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)