President Jacques Chirac paid a handsome tribute to French football captain Zinedine Zidane on Monday as the nation struggled to understand what prompted the midfield maestro to head butt a player in the World Cup final.

France's President Jacques Chirac (L) escorts French national soccer team captain Zinedine Zidane as they arrive for a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris July 10, 2006. [Reuters]

Zidane was named the tournament's best player on Monday, despite his dismissal for an astonishing blow to the chest on Italy defender Marco Materazzi that ensured he missed the penalty shoot-out that decided the game.

Neither man has spoken in public about the verbal exchange that preceded the ignominious end to the career of a soccer icon whose bewitching ball skills made him best of his generation.

Despite the controversy, Chirac had only praise for an "exceptional captain", the team and much-criticised coach Raymond Domenech as he greeted the tired-looking team for lunch at his official Elysee Palace.

"Dear Zinedine Zidane, what I want to tell you at this perhaps most intense and difficult time in your career, is the admiration and the affection of the whole nation -- it's respect too," Chirac said.

"You are a virtuoso, a genius of world football. You are also a man of the heart, of commitment, of conviction, and that's why France admires and loves you."

Zidane fired France to victory in the 1998 World Cup and had hoped to lead his team to further glory in Germany in what he had said would be the final game of his career.

Commentators scrutinised video footage of the head butting searching for clues to the loss of self-control that many fans felt cost France the game.

"He acted a bit like a street kid, a spoilt child," said Benjamin Idrac, who was charging around Roissy airport outside Paris in his car for a glimpse of the returning stars.

"He didn't even go to pick up his medal and congratulate (goalkeeper Fabien) Barthez and the others. I hope he will apologise," he said.

TEAM GREETED

An unshaven Zidane gave a sheepish smile as Chirac and his wife Bernadette greeted the team at the Elysee. The players were later due to salute fans from the balcony of the luxury Le Crillon hotel in central Paris.

Despite his dismissal, Zidane's team mates refused to publicly criticise the player or divulge his locker room explanation of the head butt.

"You should ask him yourselves," France defender Jean-Alain Boumsong told reporters. "Obviously he was very disappointed to end (his career) with a defeat, above all, and to have left his team mates. But he remains a great man."

France striker Thierry Henry, using the affectionate nickname by which Zidane is known, said: "All I want to say to 'Zizou', and I think France should say it and the world of football ... is 'thank you', and 'thank you'. That's it."

"We should thank him because if he hadn't returned (to the national side) we would not have been there tonight," added France defender Willy Sagnol.

Sports Minister Jean-Francois Lamour, a former Olympic champion who saw Zidane after the game, said he had appeared "totally devastated to have ended his very beautiful, very great career in that fashion".

The daily newspaper Le Parisien asked how "the blue angel turned into a devil," while sports paper L'Equipe condemned the "stupid" assault on Materazzi that editorialist Claude Droussent said it was hard to forgive.

"What should we tell our children and all those for whom you have become an example for ever?" he asked, concluding: "How could that happen to a man like you?"