Zinedine Zidane is feeling playful. When I meet the 1998 world champion in a small seafood restaurant in Madrid this spring, it doesn’t take long for ‘Zizou’ to feel at ease in front of our photographer’s lens. Although the French former No. 10 will, later in the day, confide how much his two years away from the pitch have helped him – and share his desire to get back into the game – for the moment he is his old self again. When a member of the photo crew moves a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray sitting on the restaurant’s zinc bar to make room for a plate of doughnuts, Zidane spontaneously grabs two and places them in front of his eyes like goggles.
Oscar Wilde’s novel isn’t of much interest to Zizou anyway. The book that matters most to the former Real Madrid coach is by his father, Smaïl: Sur Les Chemins de Pierres (On Paths of Stones), which is always on his bedside table and which he brings with him to our meeting. It is an account of the Zidane family’s modest life, accompanied by short poems, life lessons, and maxims that act as ‘a comforting talisman’ for the Real Madrid legend. The book traces the elder Zidane’s journey from his childhood in Algeria (specifically in the mountains of Kabylia) to his arrival in France, being hired as a construction worker in Paris, and then his life in Marseille. With its slightly yellowed pages but intact cover, the book guides Zidane as a coach, a father, and a man. The values it advocates — humility, discretion, perseverance, and confidence — remain deeply rooted in his character to this day.
“My dad passed on a lot to me. When he cut my hair or rubbed olive oil into it before and after matches, he always used the opportunity to pass on a message,” says Zidane. “As a parent, you need an angle to get your kids to listen, especially when they’re teenagers. When my dad looked after me, he had my full attention. With my kids, the way I can hold their attention is through football. On that topic, they listen to me.” Zidane’s four sons – Enzo, Luca, Theo, and Elyaz – have all pursued careers as top-level players, and their father’s advice must have proved invaluable. Although he never massaged his sons’ hair with olive oil, Zizou has played a lot of football with them. “When I was still active, Enzo and Luca wanted to play football all the time. I trained a lot and at home I would sometimes prefer to rest, but they wouldn’t let me,” says Zidane. “When we arrived in Madrid, we lived in a flat with a very small garden. I remember playing with them on the top floor and having to get down on my knees because of the low roof in the attic. I did a lot of things! Luckily Theo and Elyaz [his two younger sons] went easy on me.”
The seafood restaurant where we meet is an appropriate place to discuss the discreet and simple life that Zizou has built for himself, away from the cameras. The frosted windows of the restaurant protect us from the eyes of passers-by; a multitude of photographs on the walls convey the family character of the place. One frame holds a black-and-white photograph of Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium. It’s not just any picture but an aerial shot from 14 December 1947, when Real Madrid’s home was inaugurated, during a friendly match against Os Belenenses, once one of the greatest clubs in Portuguese football. The restaurant’s slightly faded feel exudes an appealing authenticity, which seems to help Zidane feel at ease while he is photographed.
Since leaving Real Madrid in 2021, after his second stint as the club’s manager, Zidane has been spending more time with his family and friends, relaxing, and reconnecting with his former self – free of the constant and exhausting pressure of being a coach, which he has decided is simply not viable over the long term for him.
“At the end of a season on the bench, you are even more tired than a player. The two jobs have nothing to do with each other. I remember that as a footballer, I was focused on my performance and that of the team. I only thought about being as good as possible to help my team,” Zidane says. “The coach, on the other hand, is in charge of 23 guys and it never stops.” The man who won no less than 13 titles in just three and a half seasons with Real Madrid – including three consecutive Champions League titles in 2016, 2017, and 2018, a feat unheard of for a coach –describes the Dantean pace of his early days in charge of the first team. The days that started at 8am and ended at 11pm, the training sessions, the tactical analysis, the video, the press conferences and appearances, the travel, the personal exchanges with the players... “When I went home, my head was always back at work. In this job, it comes from all sides. All the information rushes at you and you have the responsibility to make all these decisions. It’s a real drain on your energy,” he says. “I love what I do and I’m able to work a lot, but every now and then, and I've done this twice, I need a break. Now I just enjoy life. I have time to visit my parents if I want to, to have lunch with my wife and kids when I’m in Madrid, and to spend time with my mates. All this is only possible if you take a step back. My life is always going at a high speed but I feel refreshed now.”
Zinedine Zidane knows how to take his time. After hanging up his football boots after the 2006 World Cup final in Germany, the former Ballon D’Or winner did not rush into anything. After initially becoming a sporting adviser to Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez in 2009, Zidane did not take charge of Real Madrid’s first team until 2016. In the intervening years, he took the time to train as a coach, learn from the best, and perfect his knowledge of both the sport and how to manage a team. “Zidane was often seen as a star on the pitch, but behind his technical mastery there was an enormous amount of work and determination,” recalls his former Bordeaux and France teammate Bixente Lizarazu. “I couldn’t imagine that he would become a coach when we were players, simply because we each experienced the end of our professional careers differently, but one thing was certain: Whatever his goal, he was going to give it his all, give himself the means to do it, and step by step, achieve it.”
While Zidane could have been content to get a BEPF (a Brevet d'entraîneur Professionnel de Football de haut niveau, a French coaching certificate) to manage a top-level team – a diploma which is easily attainable for former French international players – the Marseille native insisted on training to become a general manager of a sports club at the Centre de Droit et d'Economie du Sport in Limoges, France. This is typical of Zidane, who does not choose the easy route, knows how to assess his own abilities, and has always been methodical in establishing how to achieve his goals. “Those three years of study were necessary and inspired me. Spending a few days in Munich with Pep Guardiola [manager of Bayern Munich from 2013 to 2016] and his staff, being close to the action and being able to ask all sorts of questions, that was remarkable,” he recalls. “For Guardiola and me, who have played against each other and have a lot of mutual respect, the exchange was enriching.”
After spending the 2013-2014 season as an assistant to newly-appointed Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti, there were rumours that Zidane would take a position with Girondins de Bordeaux. Instead he took charge of Castilla, Real Madrid’s reserve team, which plays in Spain’s third division. “He started small but his career took off very quickly, and it wasn’t at a typical club,” says Lizarazu, referring to his friend’s “crazy career”. Zidane’s meteoric rise is undoubtedly due in no small part to the environment at Real: his personal knowledge of the club and how it works, Pérez’s confidence in his abilities, and his closeness to the players, many of whom admired and respected him and had known him as an assistant before he took over the first team, and achieved football history.
During our exchange, it’s clear that Zidane thinks it crucial to surround oneself with people to whom you can delegate, and then value the contributions of others. “The more competent your team is, the better your chances of succeeding,” he says. “And I really only had top guys on my side. I know how lucky you are as a manager to be able to concentrate on the games and what you want from the players. Thirty years ago, coaches were in charge of everything, physical preparation, tactics, video, even putting out the cones.”
Sergio Ramos, the Spanish World Cup-winning defender who won three Champions League titles and two La Ligas at Real Madrid under Zidane, praised his former coach’s “deep knowledge of the game”, which he says comes from his time on the pitch. “Zidane is a great coach for many reasons, not least because he was one of the greatest players ever,” the Andalusian defender, who joined Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2021, wrote via WhatsApp. “He knows exactly how the players think, what they need, and how to boost their morale.”
Zidane himself gives me a specific example. At many clubs, the players selected for a match-day squad go to a hotel with the team’s staff the night before the game to guarantee everyone is in their best possible state the next day. Younger players are protected from the temptations of nightclubs and others from the distractions of families. “When you’re 34 and have children, it’s just not possible anymore,” Zidane told us. “At Real Madrid, I used to gather the players together before training the day before a match and I always had the same message for them. ‘We aren’t going to spend tonight together in a hotel.’ Every time I could see the joy in their eyes. The level of training afterwards always improved. It was amazing.”
When I met Raphaël Varane in Manchester in the spring, the France international confirmed his former coach’s ability to understand his players, but also emphasised Zidane’s ability to transmit a sense of serenity in the team, through his clear vision of a style of football based on pleasure and audacity. Zidane, Varane says, instils the desire to always make progress and surpass oneself. “He conveyed a calmness and confidence that is pretty crazy,” the 2018 World Cup winner says. “If he asks us to do such and such a thing on the pitch but it goes wrong and we make mistakes trying, he takes all the responsibility. He makes us feel comfortable trying things and enjoying ourselves more. Personally, Zidane pushed me to take more risks on the pitch and allowed me to develop my qualities.”
Like during the 2018 Champions League final in Kyiv, which pitted Cristiano Ronaldo's Real Madrid against Mohamed Salah's Liverpool. At half-time, when neither team had taken the lead, Zizou used the 15-minute break to briefly analyse why Liverpool were causing problems for his side and give specific instructions to Isco, Marcelo, and Sergio Ramos.
That’s all it took. His clear and inspiring speech lasted barely two minutes and ended with the entire squad applauding. The footage, captured by Madrid’s television station and broadcast in the wake of Real Madrid’s triumph – after a memorable acrobatic goal by Welsh winger Gareth Bale – is a testament to one of Zidane’s most important qualities as a coach: the clarity and conciseness of his communications with players. “Half-time talks were always like that when I was a player. The great coaches I had, like Marcello Lippi or Aimé Jacquet, who was also very tactful, knew you couldn’t talk for 15 minutes,” says Zidane. “If the game is not going well, you have to say what is not working, indicate the changes to be made, explain why, and that’s it. Thank you and goodbye.”
At the beginning of April, the acacias in Madrid’s Retiro Park are already in bloom. This green space located a stone’s throw from the Prado Museum covers 125 hectares and is the city’s lungs. It is home to various historical monuments, a lake, a rose garden, but also football pitches and padel courts – two sports practised in the Z5 sports centres that Zidane has opened in the south of France, in Aix-en-Provence and Istres, and in Italy, in Turin. At first glance, the Retiro would not appear to be the ideal place to hang out discreetly with an international star, but Zizou was keen to go. It is a place he visits often.
When I ask him if walking in a place so popular with both tourists and locals involves too many requests from fans for selfies, Zidane shakes his head. “No. I put on a cap and it’s all fine,” he says. Except that on the day we meet, Zizou’s head is bare, and passers-by easily recognise the champion. Some offer compliments or ask for a photo. A woman in her sixties gives him a handshake as if to congratulate him. Zidane answers with a smile every time. A 10-year-old boy named Pedro is given an autograph. Looking at his father’s face, I wonder which of the two will emerge happier from this exchange. Zidane’s appeal seems to be unanimous, touching all generations.
“It's important to be yourself, but I also understand that you can change when you’re in the spotlight and people tell you that you’re the best looking and the strongest all day long. All this can be destabilising, especially today,” Zidane says. “Fortunately my wife and children are my glue, they are stronger than anything.”
A friend and adviser to Zidane confirms that his long-time friend has always kept it simple. “Money and fame have never changed anything in his way of being,” the businessman says. “He knows who he is, what he stands for, and always leads by example.”
As we walk I am reminded of an image: an extremely sober black-and-white portrait of Zidane with a determined gaze, captioned with the word Legend. The advertisement for the Montblanc perfume was plastered all over major French cities last winter. But how can a man remain humble when a whole country, and certainly millions more people worldwide, consider him a living legend? “Of course the association is nice, but it’s never up to you to say you’re a legend, it’s other people who look at you and judge you,” Zidane says. “When you come from where I come from, when you look at my career and where I have arrived, it is still beautiful. So, you shouldn’t miss a moment of it and instead enjoy every day.”
Despite Zidane’s already impressive list of achievements, his desire to win will no doubt soon lead him to take on a new challenge. His desire to be in contact with footballers, and football, is central to his career. “There is nothing better than talking to a player before a match. I need that and it’s the basis of the job for me: to talk together, to feel how he’s doing, to make him understand that everything is going to be fine, and to pass on what I can,” he says with passion.
“I was personally amazed by the almost total control he shows on the bench and the calm he inspires, whereas on the pitch he can be fiery. If someone stepped on him, he didn’t let it go,” explains Lizarazu. Zidane was different from other big football stars who have huge egos. He was always altruistic and listened to others, and these are qualities that are necessary to be a coach. Varane also highlights the human qualities and empathy of his former coach: “He really wants his players to enjoy themselves on the pitch and you can feel that. When you have someone who always protects his players, you want to fight for him.”
Zidane is a man who shares his football expertise with pleasure. Behind his lifelong passion for the game, is a single objective: winning. “When you are a top player and you start winning, this adrenaline never leaves you and it guides you every day,” Zidane says. “It’s a feeling that really impacts you and you never get tired of it. No matter how many times I’ve won and won again, I’ll always have that desire to win again.”
But where? What will Zidane’s future hold? It's hard to say, given that the Frenchman, who turns 51 this summer, cultivates discretion. Not revealing his game plan and nurturing moments of surprise is part of Zizou’s character. But the decision, he says, will be based not on planning, but emotion.
“In general, I don't prepare, I do what I feel like doing,” he says. “Like my first break in Madrid. I had done two and a half years ‘a tope’ [roughly ‘flat out’] as they say in Spanish. We had won a lot and I really needed a break. And then eight months later, after a hiatus that was good for me personally, the club’s president called me and I went right back. I could have said to myself: ‘I did what I did. Why put myself back in there?’ But I didn’t calculate all that, I go by instinct.”
When we talk about his future, Zizou expresses his desire to get back on the bench, but says he does not know where his next stop will be. He is not interested in feeding the rumours on various websites that have speculated he’ll go to Paris Saint-Germain or Manchester United, or others that imagine him returning to Turin. When asked about the possibility of becoming a coach for France’s Les Bleus, and a supposed rivalry with Didier Deschamps, he answers, “I have often said that when you have been on the French team as a player and then you become a coach, it is only logical to think about it. But this is not the time.” Wherever he ends up, he will once again be motivated by one thing: winning. “When I was at Cannes, I wanted to go to Bordeaux. Then I wanted to play at Juve and then Madrid because each was a different and greater challenge. It’s simply called ambition. I’ve always been ambitious, and I’ve always believed in myself. I'm going for it.” Meanwhile, the footballing world is waiting to see in exactly which direction he will go.
Photography by Mathieu César
Styling by Tobias Frericks
Hair and make-up by Miky Vallés at Another
Set design by Cito Ballesta
Production manager Carlota García-Velasco
Production by Sample
