ZIDAnE
immersed himself in the daily family life that football had denied
him. Every day, Zidane would pick his sons up from school and drive
them to Real Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground in his club Audi –
afforded him as club ambassador – for training.
He’d sit incognito in the stands, wearing a scarf, hat and overcoat
to avoid being recognised, and watch Enzo, Luca and Theo (while
sitting with an infant Elyaz, too young to take part) take their
formative steps in the game. He would then drive the brood back to
the family home in Conde Orgaz – the upmarket, tree-lined Madrid
suburb where the Zidanes have lived since first moving to the
Spanish capital in 2001.
“I had lots of offers to carry on but I left – that tells you everything,”
he told FFT back in 2013. “You get tired of it. I couldn’t take it anymore.
You’re always in a hotel if you’re playing every three days. In the early
days it can seem fun, but not when you’re 34 or 35. But you miss the
adrenaline of playing. You’ll always miss that.”
Those last two sentences proved increasingly instructive. Zinedine
progressed from ambassador, to Perez’s special advisor and link with
the dressing room under Jose Mourinho in 2010, then sporting director
12 months later and finally Ancelotti’s assistant in 2013. Yet nothing
sated Zizou’s adrenaline fix. The man who as a kid wanted to be a lorry
driver, because people would depend on him, had to be a manager.
“He was looking inside himself for the best way to become successful
through his own work, not just by being called Zidane,” brother Farid
revealed about those intervening years.
“Yaz [those closest to Zidane call him by his middle name, almost as
a badge of honour] missed the feeling of angst and pressure that the
games produced inside him,” said his other brother Noureddine. “And
he can feel that again now as a coach.”
Many were surprised when he took charge of Real Madrid Castilla, the
club’s reserve team, in the summer of 2014, but a handful had
already witnessed the green shoots of a coach in him.
“Let me tell you, Zidane was one of the greatest players I’ve worked
with in 40 years as a manager,” Paulo Campos, assistant to Blancos
boss Vanderlei Luxemburgo from 2004 to 2005, tells FFT. “But he was
never full of himself. He’d spend ages talking with a team-mate who
didn’t understand something or to give his own opinions on tactics.
“You know that feeling of: ‘How did he think of that?’ Zidane didn’t
only think about it, he had another five options in his head as well.”
If Perez wanted Zidane to be Madrid’s Pep Guardiola and guide the
second-string outfit to promotion, the president was in for a shock as
Castilla lost five of their first six games.
Zidane was also mired in controversy over his unfinished UEFA Pro
Licence – the coaching qualification required to work in Spain’s top
four divisions. Having chosen the three-year course with the French
FA instead of Spain’s fast-track option for elite players, he would not
finish his course until May 2015 – nine months after taking
the Castilla reigns. The head of the Spanish coaching federation,
Miguel Angel Galan, demanded Zizou’s suspension. Real Madrid
appealed the decision in court and won.
That first season was hardly an auspicious start.
“He had to find his way,” Guy Lacombe, Zidane’s Pro Licence
mentor and also the Frenchman’s first coach at Cannes’ youth
academy when he was 15, tells FFT. “It was better for him to go
through this early in his career. He learned just how difficult this
job can be. He needed a year to grow.
“He understood that, whatever your game plan, you have to
compose something special: your players, their profile, how you
work with them on specific aspects,” Lacombe adds. “The more
he knew his players, the better things became.”
“The first day he was Castilla coach, we had a chat in the dressing
room before we went outside to training,” Derik, Zidane’s first-choice
centre-back for that campaign, now on the books at Bolton, tells FFT.MADRID’S 2017 LIGA An D CHAMPIOn S LEAGUE
DOUBLE WAS THE CLUB’S FIRST SIn CE 1958
The manager who should never have been is now staring down the
barrel of becoming the first coach in tournament history to win three
European Cup titles in a row.
Exactly how did Zidane, the man whose playing career ended in such
poetic headbutting ignominy, tame his inner fire to supersede former
mentor Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola to become
the best football manager in the world? And in just 18 months, too.
“ZIDAn E HAD TO FIn D HIS OWn WAY”
When Zinedine Yazid Zidane stuck his forehead into Marco
Materazzi’s chest with 10 minutes of extra time remaining in the
2006 World Cup Final, the greatest player of his generation wanted
nothing else to do with football. He had won 15 major honours,
including the World Cup, Euros and the Champions League, having
become the beautiful game’s Monet masterpiece, Beethoven
symphony and Nureyev recital.
Such was Zidane’s grace, you wonder whether he had studied every
movement his wife Veronique – a professional ballet dancer until she
was 18 – had ever made to pivot, plié and caress that left-foot volley
into the top corner to win the Champions League final in 2002.
Born in the notorious Marseille neighbourhood of La Castellane to
Algerian parents Smail and Malika, Zizou returned to his North African
roots, became the face of a myriad products and, most importantly,
Left Zidane made
history in Cardiff,
having served as
assistant to Carlo
Ancelotti (below)ZIDAn E