Zinedine Yazid Zidane (French pronunciation: [zinedin jazid zidan], Arabic: زين الدين يزيد زيدان; born 23 June 1972), popularly known as Zizou, is a French former professional football player who played as an attacking midfielder. He is the current manager of La Liga club Real Madrid and is one of the most successful managers in the world.[4][5][6][7] Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time,[8][9][10] Zidane was an elite playmaker renowned for his elegance, vision, passing, ball control, and technique.[11][12] He received many individual accolades as a player, including being named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1998, 2000 and 2003, and winning the 1998 Ballon d'Or.
Zidane started his career at Cannes before establishing himself as one of the best players in the French Division 1 at Bordeaux. In 1996, he moved to Juventus where he won trophies including two Serie A titles. He moved to Real Madrid for a world record fee at the time of €77.5 million in 2001, which remained unmatched for the next eight years. In Spain, Zidane won several trophies, including a La Liga title and the UEFA Champions League. In the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final, he scored a left-foot volleyed winner which is considered to be one of the greatest goals in the competition's history.[13]
Capped 108 times by France, Zidane won the 1998 FIFA World Cup, scoring twice in the final, and was named to the All-Star Team. This triumph made him a national hero in France, and he received the Légion d'honneur in 1998. He won UEFA Euro 2000, and was named Player of the Tournament. He also received the Golden Ball for Player of the Tournament at the 2006 World Cup, despite his infamous sending off in the final against Italy for headbutting Marco Materazzi in the chest. He retired as the fourth-most capped player in France history.
In 2004, he was named in the FIFA 100, a list of the world's greatest living players compiled by Pelé, and in the same year was named the best European footballer of the past 50 years in the UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll.[14] Zidane is one of eight players to have won the FIFA World Cup, the UEFA Champions League and the Ballon d'Or.[15] He was the ambassador for Qatar's successful bid to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the first Arab country to host the tournament.[16]
After retiring as a player, Zidane transitioned into coaching, and began his head coaching career at Real Madrid Castilla.[17] He remained in the position for two years before taking the helm of the first team in 2016.[18] In his initial two and a half seasons, Zidane became the first coach to win the Champions League three times consecutively, won the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup twice each, as well as a La Liga title and a Supercopa de España.[19] This success led to Zidane being named Best FIFA Men's Coach in 2017.[20] He resigned in 2018,[21][22] but returned to the club as manager in 2019,[23] and proceeded to win another La Liga and Supercopa de España title.[24]
Contents
Early life and career
La Castellane in the northwestern edge of Marseille where Zidane was born in 1972
La Corniche, seaside roadway along the coast of Marseille, with a mural of Zidane on the wall
Zinedine Yazid Zidane was born on 23 June 1972 in La Castellane, Marseille, in Southern France.[25] He is the youngest of five siblings. Zidane is a Muslim of Algerian Kabyle descent.[26][27] His parents, Smaïl and Malika, emigrated to Paris from the village of Aguemoune in the Berber-speaking region of Kabylie in northern Algeria in 1953 before the start of the Algerian War. The family, which had settled in the city's tough northern districts of Barbès and Saint-Denis, found little work in the region, and in the mid-1960s moved to the northern Marseille suburb of La Castellane in the 16th arrondissement of Marseille.[28]
I have an affinity with the Arabic world. I have it in my blood, via my parents. I’m very proud of being French, but also very proud of having these roots and this diversity.
His father worked as a warehouseman and nightwatchman at a department store, often on the night shift, while his mother was a housewife.[26] The family lived a reasonably comfortable life by the standards of the neighbourhood, which was notorious throughout Marseille for its high crime and unemployment rates.[27][30] Zidane credits his strict upbringing and his father as the "guiding light" in his career.[29]
It was in Castellane where Zidane had his earliest introduction in football, joining in at the age of five in football games that the neighbourhood's children played on the Place Tartane, an 80-by-12-yard plaza that served as the main square of the housing complex.[31] In July 2011, Zidane named former Marseille players Blaž Slišković, Enzo Francescoli and Jean-Pierre Papin as his idols while growing up.[32][33] At the age of ten, Zidane got his first player's licence after joining the junior team of a local club from Castellane by the name of US Saint-Henri.[34] After spending a year and a half at US Saint-Henri, Zidane joined SO Septèmes-les-Vallons when the Septèmes coach Robert Centenero convinced the club's Director to get Zidane.[34] Zidane stayed with Septèmes until the age of 14, at which time he was selected to attend a three-day training camp at the CREPS (Regional Centre for Sports and Physical Education) in Aix-en-Provence, one of several such footballing institutes run by the French Football Federation. It was here that Zidane was spotted by AS Cannes scout and former player Jean Varraud, who recommended him to the training centre director of the club.[11] As a 14 year old watching the 1986 World Cup, the performance of Diego Maradona left an indelible mark on him, with Zidane stating Maradona "was on another level".[35]
Club career
Cannes
"He’d go past one, two, three, five, six players – it was sublime. His feet spoke with the ball"
—Jean Varraud, former player who discovered Zidane.[11]
Zidane went to AS Cannes for a six-week stay, but ended up remaining at the club for four years to play at the professional level. Having left his family to join Cannes, he was invited by Cannes Director Jean-Claude Elineau to leave the dormitory he shared with 20 other trainees and to come and stay with him and his family. Zidane later said that while living with the Elineaus he found equilibrium.[26]
It was at Cannes where Zidane's first coaches noticed that he was raw and sensitive, prone to attack spectators who insulted his race or family.[36] His first coach, Jean Varraud, encouraged him to channel his anger and focus on his own game. Zidane spent his first weeks at Cannes mainly on cleaning duty as a punishment for punching an opponent who mocked his ghetto origins.[36] The occasional violence that he would display throughout his career was shaped by an internal conflict of being an Algerian-Frenchman suspended between cultures, and surviving the tough streets of La Castellane where he grew up.[36]
Zidane made his professional debut with Cannes on 18 May 1989 in a French Division 1 match against Nantes.[37] He scored his first goal for the club on 10 February 1991[38] also against Nantes in a 2–1 win. After the match during a party for all the Cannes players, Zidane was given a car by Cannes chairman Alain Pedretti, who had promised him one the day he scored his first goal for the club.[39] On the pitch, Zidane displayed extraordinary technique on the ball, offering glimpses of the talent that would take him to the top of the world game.[11] In his first full season with Cannes, the club secured its first ever European football berth by qualifying for the UEFA Cup after finishing fourth in the league. This remains the club's highest finish in the top flight since getting relegated for the first time from the first division in the 1948–49 season.[40]
Bordeaux
Zidane was transferred to Girondins de Bordeaux in the 1992–93 season, winning the 1995 Intertoto Cup after beating Karlsruhe,[41][42] and finishing runner-up against Bayern Munich in the 1995–96 UEFA Cup,[42][43][44] in four years with the club. He played a set of midfield combinations with Bixente Lizarazu and Christophe Dugarry, which would become the trademark of both Bordeaux and the 1998 French national team. In 1995, Blackburn Rovers manager Kenny Dalglish had expressed interest in signing both Zidane and Dugarry, to which club owner Jack Walker reportedly replied, "Why do you want to sign Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood?"[45] Also towards the beginning of the 1996 season, according to football agent Barry Silkman, Zidane was offered to Newcastle United for £1.2 million, but the club turned down the offer after watching him, claiming that he was not good enough for the English First Division.[46] In 1996, Zidane received the award for Ligue 1 Player of the Year.[47]
Juventus
"He is a special player. He creates space where there is none. No matter where he gets the ball or how it comes to him, he can get out of trouble. His imagination and his technique are amazing"
—Juventus teammate Edgar Davids on Zidane's ability.[48]
After a series of stand out performances for both Bordeaux and France, Zidane had offers to join Europe's top clubs in the spring of 1996, deciding on a move to UEFA Champions League winners Juventus during the close season.[49] Zidane's impact in Italy was immediate, winning the 1996–97 Serie A title and the 1996 Intercontinental Cup.[50] He was named Serie A Foreign Footballer of the Year in his first season.[51] Zidane's growing status in the sport saw him chosen in a European XI to face a World XI – featuring a forward line of Ronaldo and Gabriel Batistuta – in December 1997.[52]
As the playmaker at Juve, Zidane played just behind forward Alessandro Del Piero, with Del Piero recalling, "Zidane had an extraordinary talent, which contributed to his sole interest in helping the team. He was not a selfish player. He had a unique ability to be a great and to be a team player. I was lucky to play with him."[53] He lost in the 1997 UEFA Champions League Final 3–1 to Borussia Dortmund when he was unable to make an impression against the close marking of Paul Lambert.[54]
The following season, Zidane scored seven goals in 32 matches in the league to help Juventus win the 1997–98 Serie A and thus retain the Scudetto. In Europe, Juventus made their third consecutive UEFA Champions League Final appearance, but lost the game 1–0 to Real Madrid. In 1998, Zidane was named FIFA World Player of the Year, and won the Ballon d'Or. Juventus finished second in the 2000–01 Serie A, but were eliminated in the group stage of the Champions League, after Zidane was banned for head-butting Hamburger SV player Jochen Kientz.[55] In 2001, Zidane was named Serie A Foreign Footballer of the Year for the second time.[51]