'Zizou' remains one of the game's all-time great players, his blend of sublime skill wrapped up in a muscular frame driving France to victory in the 1998 World Cup on home soil.
MADRID: Two-hundred and eighty three days after resigning, Zinedine Zidane is back as coach of Real Madrid.
Julen Lopetegui was fired after three months and Santiago Solari’s team self-combusted in six days, as defeats to Barcelona, twice, and Ajax rendered their season dead before the middle of March. Perhaps in this middle-ground, with pressure neither from above or below, Zidane sees an opportunity to begin the reform. Or perhaps, after nine months away, he was simply unable to resist.
“He’s one of the greatest people we’ve ever had at this club,” Solari said, at his first press conference in November. “All the adjectives in the world are not good enough to describe Zidane. He’s calm, a great coach, and nobody can compare to him.” Yet in terms of individual brilliance, his best moment came in a Real Madrid shirt, his winning goal in the 2002 Champions League final against Bayer Leverkusen arguably the greatest ever in a European final, perhaps only bettered, ironically, by Bale’s last year.
“You can’t help but admire what he has done,” France manager Didier Deschamps, who won the World Cup as a player alongside Zidane in 1998, told France’s TF1 after they beat Liverpool in Kiev.
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