FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, said today that Zinédine Zidane, the French star player who famously head-butted an opponent in the closing minutes of the World Cup final 11 days ago, would be suspended for three games and fined 7,500 Swiss francs (about $6,000) over the incident.Marco Materazzi, the Italian opponent he butted fiercely in the chest, was also sanctioned by FIFA’s disciplinary commission over the incident today. He was banned for two Italian national-team matches and fined 5,000 Swiss francs (about $4,000) for making insulting remarks to Zidane before the incident.

In its practical effect, the punishment of Materazzi is much harsher. Zidane had already said that the World Cup final would be his last game before retirement, so the suspension is meaningless for him, and the monetary fines are trivial for both players, who are multimillionaire professional athletes. But Materazzi, who remains an active player, will miss the first two matches Italy plays as world champion, and could lose his place on the national team if his replacements excel.

FIFA said that as a gesture of contrition, Zidane would make himself available for “humanitarian activities with children and adolescents,” a rough equivalent of the community service sometimes included in sentences for minor offenses in America. Zidane has said that he planned to do such things after he retired anyway.

FIFA’s five-member disciplinary commission, sitting in Zurich with a Swiss lawyer, Marcel Mathier, as its chairman, declined to specify exactly what Materazzi had said to earn a suspension. Its statement said only that, by both players’ accounts, Materazzi’s comments to Zidane during the game had been “of a defamatory but not a racist nature.”

According to the FIFA statement, both players apologized for their inappropriate behavior and regretted the incident.

That is a change from Zidane’s stance in the first few days after the game, when he appeared on television to apologize to the children of the world who watched his head-butt, but expressly refused to express any regret.

He said then that Materazzi had insulted his mother and his sister. Materazzi told Italian reporters that he never insulted Zidane’s mother.

FIFA also changed its stance on one facet of the situation. When Zidane was named the outstanding player of the World Cup immediately after the final game, despite the head-butting incident, there was an outcry, and the president of the organization, Sepp Blatter, said it was within FIFA’s power to strip away the honor from a player who disgraced the game.

But today, the organization’s press officer, Andreas Herren, said that the question of Zidane’s best-player award “was not raised by the commission,” which met in secrecy in Zurich.

The head-butting incident quickly took on political overtones. Much of France, apparently led by President Jacques Chirac, condoned or even admired the “manliness” of Zidane, a sports idol, defending the good name of his family. Newspapers and other media outlets hired lip-reading experts to comb the videotapes of the match, and published myriad and contradictory interpretations of what Materazzi may have said to enrage Zidane.

At the same time, many Italians wondered how the words supposedly mouthed by Materazzi could be seen as a legitimate excuse for violence. They noted that FIFA decided the opposite two years ago, when Francesco Totti was barred for four games for spitting at a Danish defender, Christian Poulson, during a European Championship final in Portugal, and the provocative remarks made by Poulson were deemed irrelevant.

The handling of the Zidane prompted criticism that FIFA was more concerned about enshrining Zidane, unquestionably a leading star of his generation, in the game’s pantheon than it was with its own consistency or fairness.

It stood in stark contrast to FIFA’s handling of Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese winger who played outstandingly in the World Cup tournament and was initially hailed as a winner of its young player award.

FIFA stripped Ronaldo of that honor because of what it called “a lack of sportsmanship”: he was deemed to have “dived,” or feigned injury from being fouled, and to have run up to a referee to complain when Wayne Rooney, an Englishman, stomped on a fellow Portuguese player during a game.