There was one of his Juventus team-mates that Vincent Péricard never expected to see in a manager’s dugout. “He was very, very quiet,” he remembers. “I wouldn’t say he had a gift to make other people better. I never perceived him as someone who had the strength of character to deal with conflict and ego. I never thought that he would be the type of person who would be happy to handle the complexity and challenge of leading [a big club], because you need to be made of iron to thrive in that kind of environment.” That man was Zinédine Zidane.
Seventeen months into his top-level managerial career, Zidane, the greatest, most scrutinised player of his generation, remains an enigma. His previous coaching experience, helming Real Madrid’s junior team, Castilla, revealed nothing exceptional. His press-conference utterances are determinedly unilluminating. His coaching philosophy and tactical blueprint are unclear.
Only one thing about Zidane’s tenure is obvious: its extraordinary, unmitigated success. Within six months, he had won the Champions League. In his first full season he won La Liga with Real Madrid’s best points haul in five seasons and now stands on the brink of becoming the first manager to retain the Champions League.
Even Zidane himself seems not to have suspected he was cut out for greatness in an industry where self-belief is usually considered a non-negotiable part of the package. “When I retired, I didn’t want to be a coach,” he has said. “I wanted to dedicate myself to something else.”
Zidane’s initial steps into the nebula of a footballer’s post-retirement world were peripatetic. He took on ambassadorial roles for everything from Lego to the Qatar World Cup bid. He occasionally appeared as a pundit on Canal Plus, where he burnished his reputation as an underwhelming speaker. And he cycled through a succession of jobs at the Santiago Bernabeu — adviser to the club president Florentino Pérez, special adviser to the first team, sporting director, assistant manager, Castilla manager — a process by which, in gradual stages, he gained legitimacy and approached the throne.
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“I think the vocation came to him through a series of encounters,” says Guy Lacombe, who has known Zidane since he coached him as a teenager at AS Cannes and later tutored him when he was taking his coaching badges at France’s Direction Technique Nationále. “As assistant manager to [José] Mourinho and [Carlo] Ancelotti he matured a bit. I think he said to himself, ‘Why not?’ and little by little, he sketched the outlines of his future job.”
“After everything he’s lived, he couldn’t stay away,” his brother Noureddine said. “Something would be missing: the pressure, that anxiety before a match, which can only be regained by being a coach.”
When Zidane was appointed in January last year, few expected him to be a roaring success. Perhaps, with hindsight, we should have been more optimistic about Zizou the manager. This was, after all, one of the most cerebral players of his era. “You could tell by the way he moved around the pitch, the way he analysed the game, the way he anticipated the game, you need some deep thinking [to do] that,” Péricard says. “It doesn’t surprise me that now he’s applying that kind of skill to understand people’s minds, people’s behaviours, what they need, what they don’t need and how to manage them.”
But the impression persisted — arguably yet to be entirely dispelled — that Zidane was a figurehead, someone whose appointment owed more to his magnetism than any tactical acumen. “These days, you have someone to prepare the training sessions, someone who takes care of fitness,” Raymond Domenech, Zidane’s former France coach, told Le Monde in the week of his unveiling. “To manage in 2016, you need only two things: an image, and some weight in the eyes of the players. Zidane has the necessary ingredients.”
To some extent, this has proved to be an accurate summation of Zidane’s managerial reign. Much of the nuts-and-bolts training-ground work — an area where the likes of Antonio Conte and Mauricio Pochettino are rigorously hands-on — is done by Zidane’s assistant, David Bettoni, whom he has known since his Cannes days.
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Certainly, Zidane’s charisma, and the respect he inspires in a notoriously mutinous dressing room, is a crucial part of his armoury. His predecessor, Rafael Benítez, was mocked and resented for his less-than-stellar playing career. Zidane’s aura insulates him. “Zidane is a god in human form,” Domenech added. “He embodies talent and creativity; he has the gift of not needing to say much. He has that bit of mystery that surrounds stars.”
Much of Zidane’s authority derives from the fact that he has endured the unique tribulations of a truly elite playing career, and in that regard, there can be little doubt that Real Madrid’s star-studded dressing room is a perfect fit. “The Real Madrid players are players of his own calibre,” Lacombe says. “To have difficulties on that level, and to resolve them in order to come out stronger, is something that he knows well. Everything that he has done has served to make him more at ease in the work he does at Real.”
But it is becoming plainer with every passing match that Zidane is more than just a totemic figure in the right place at the right time. His CV is, unquestionably, that of a gifted coach. But nobody really seems to know what makes him so good. Lacombe, who as Zidane’s tutor frequently observed his Castilla sessions, is perhaps better placed to comment than anyone.
“With ex-players [embarking on coaching careers], I always have the image in my head of someone diving into a swimming pool where all the water had been drained out,” he laughs.
“Improving players, helping them to progress, that’s where a manager really earns his value, and that’s where you can say that Yazid [Zidane’s middle name] is very intelligent. He’s someone who absorbs everything and interprets it in his own way, and that’s a real strength.
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“He always said, ‘I will be a different manager.’ He is a manager who always listens to his players. His management style is horizontal as opposed to vertical. And he is very in-depth — in every single domain, he wants to know exactly what’s going on, how things are progressing.
“Above all, he knows how to talk to that squad, how to involve everybody. You can tell he’s a different manager, because to galvanise all the members, even the youngest, of a squad like Real Madrid’s, that’s extraordinary.”
Nobody rates tactics as one of Zidane’s key strengths, but even here he is improving. In the Champions League quarter-final first leg against Bayern Munich, managed by Zidane’s old master Ancelotti, Real were 1-0 down at half-time and thoroughly outplayed. But Zidane made a brilliant change, bringing on Marco Asensio and switching to 4-4-2, which allowed Real to wrest control.
Still, the consensus is that Zidane has not yet accomplished enough to be regarded on the same plane as Ancelotti, Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp. But beat Juventus tomorrow and he will achieve something that proved beyond them, and he will surely start to be bracketed with the elite managers of the modern game — much to the amazement of those who once shared his dressing room.
“I’m extremely surprised that he’s achieved so much so quickly,” Péricard says. “What he has done shows his quality, his vision, all the attributes that you expect from a world-class manager. Whatever happened in his life, something has made him the man, and the manager, that he is today.”
Great players, but great managers?
Being one of the world’s finest players has not always guaranteed success on the other side of the touchline
Diego Maradona
Took charge of his native Argentina in 2008 for an ill-fated stint that ended with a 4-0 defeat by Germany at the quarter-final stage of the 2010 World Cup. He is now managing Al-Fujairah in the UAE having been sacked by Dubai club Al Wasl in 2012.
Managerial honours none
Johan Cruyff
The former Ajax and Barcelona forward went on to manage both clubs with great success, lifting the European Cup with the latter at Wembley in 1992.
Managerial honours Ajax: Dutch Cup x 2, Uefa Cup Winners’ Cup x 1. Barcelona: La Liga x 4, European Cup x 1, Uefa Cup Winners’ Cup x 1, Copa del Rey x 1
Franz Beckenbauer
One of only two men, along with Brazil’s Mário Zagallo, to have lifted the World Cup as a player and a manager — firstly as captain of West Germany in 1974, and then when he was in charge of the national side in 1990. Also enjoyed success with Marseilles and Bayern Munich.
Managerial honours World Cup x 1, Ligue 1 x 1, Bundesliga x 1, Uefa Cup x 1
Michel Platini
Was named France coach in 1988 but failed to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Platini stayed, and his side recovered to go into the 1992 European Championships as favourites, but he eventually resigned after they suffered a first-round exit.
Managerial honours none