Sign up now!!!<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n\u201cThe France job was the only one I wanted,\u201d Zidane said after his unveiling in Paris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had offers over these four or five years to take charge of a club and I turned them all down for the French national team.\u201d <\/p>\n
Born in 1972 to Algerian parents near the Mediterranean port of Marseille, few would have imagined the young boy known to his friends as Yazid, who spent his days kicking a ball around the rough La Castellane housing estate, would one day grow up to become the face of football in the country. <\/p>\n
Yazid would come to be better known by his first name, Zinedine, and, after coming through the ranks at Cannes before joining Bordeaux, his impeccable close control, imperious vision and tenacity would attract the attention of then-France boss Aime Jacquet. <\/p>\n<\/amp-img>Zinedine Zidane, newly appointed coach of the France national soccer team.<\/span>Source: AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFrom that first international call-up aged 22 in August 1994, Zidane went on to write football history.<\/p>\n
Just four years later, he had moved to Italian powerhouses Juventus and Jacquet handed him the No. 10 shirt for France as the country prepared to host the 1998 World Cup. <\/p>\n
His two headers in the final at the Stade de France on July 12 ignited a new dawn in the country as the team dubbed \u2018Black-blanc-beur\u2019, in honour of the diverse ethnic make-up of its players, beat Brazil to win a first world title. <\/p>\n
Euro 2000 glory and a then-world record transfer to Real Madrid, followed a year later by a stunning left-footed volley in the 2002 Champions League final which perfectly encapsulated the devastating beauty of Zidane\u2019s game, confirmed his status as one of the greats. <\/p>\n
After announcing his retirement from international football in 2004, he returned to spearhead France\u2019s tilt at a second World Cup coronation in 2006, but it was not to be as he departed the field for the final time as a player following a red card for headbutting Italy\u2019s Marco Materazzi at that tournament\u2019s showpiece match. <\/p>\n
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<\/div>\nBut that defeat in Berlin did not mark the end of Zidane\u2019s footballing story. <\/p>\n
Rarely loquacious during his days as a player, preferring to do his talking on the pitch, Zidane could have retired into a private bubble with his wife Veronique and four sons and kept his portfolio of various sponsorships ticking over as he enjoyed life from Madrid. <\/p>\n
Instead, he decided to go back to school.<\/p>\n
Zidane studied in Limoges, France, and obtained a diploma in sports management, before going on to qualify as a coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI left school very early, so I had to prepare myself,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Returning to Real Madrid, \u201cthe club of (his) life\u201d, he variously held the roles of advisor, sporting director, academy coach, assistant coach and eventually head coach. <\/p>\n
At the helm of a Los Blancos side containing Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale, to name but a few of the stars at his disposal, Zidane guided the club to three consecutive Champions League titles between 2016 and 2018. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t help but admire what he has done,\u201d Deschamps said after the 2018 final.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlready as a player he was extraordinary. He\u2019s had a second life as a coach and he is now an extraordinary coach.\u201d <\/p>\n
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<\/div>\nZidane left Madrid on a high after the third European crown, only to return less than a year later. In his second stint in the Bernabeu hot seat, he would win a second Spanish league title before departing in 2021. <\/p>\n
In the intervening years, the French public have yearned for Zidane to make another comeback for the national team.<\/p>\n
And the man himself did little to dampen those hopes without ever fully committing, once coyly saying on French TV that whatever will happen in his future \u201cwill happen naturally\u201d, but nonetheless routinely refuting any rumours linking him to other coaching vacancies. <\/p>\n
Now France fans have got their wish, with Zidane being given the keys to a team replete with dazzling attacking talents such as Kylian Mbappe, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembele. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am not the best coach tactically, but I have other things,\u201d Zidane said of his approach in 2018. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know very well how the dressing room and a player\u2019s head works, and that for me is very important.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u2019s favourite son, Zinedine Zidane, begins the latest chapter in his love affair with the national team after he was announced as Les Bleus\u2019 new coach on Tuesday. The on-field architect of France\u2019s first World Cup triumph takes over the reins from Didier Deschamps, who captained the side in 1998 before coaching them to their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6807],"tags":[156],"class_list":{"0":"post-255057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leagues-cups","8":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}