Zinedine Zidane Returns to France National Team: Luca Zidane's New Path
Zinedine Zidane’s return to the France national team has sent a jolt through world football. The 1998 World Cup icon, long courted and constantly linked with the job, has reportedly agreed to take over Les Bleus, with L’Équipe stating he will officially step in on September 1. Reports suggest his deal will run until mid-2030, a long-term commitment for a man who has never done anything by halves in football.
As the father prepares to walk back into the heart of French football, the son has already walked away from it.
Luca Zidane, 28, chose a different flag and a different path. While Zinedine moves toward the France dugout, Luca spent this World Cup in Algeria colours, standing in goal as the North African nation’s No 1 despite carrying a chin and jaw injury. It was a bold decision, and a symbolic one: one Zidane going back to where it all began, another embracing a different strand of the family’s heritage.
From Madrid’s academy to the Bernabéu pitch
Luca’s story started in the shadows of greatness. He grew up inside the Real Madrid system, a goalkeeper climbing through the youth ranks of the same club where his father became a legend and later a treble Champions League–winning coach.
His professional debut came in 2018, under the most unusual of circumstances: his own father as head coach. Wearing the Real Madrid shirt, with Zinedine Zidane on the touchline, he stepped into La Liga action and made two league appearances before the chapter quietly closed.
By 2020, Luca needed his own space, his own dressing room, his own story. He left Real Madrid and signed a two-year contract with Rayo Vallecano, staying in Spanish football but moving out from under the brightest spotlight in Europe. Before that departure, Madrid had already tested him elsewhere, sending him on loan to Racing de Santander during his final season at the club. It was a classic goalkeeper’s route: minutes in the lower tiers, pressure in smaller stadiums, the hard schooling that doesn’t make headlines but shapes careers.
Building a career away from the spotlight
The surname never left him, but the stage changed. After Rayo, Luca dropped into the second tier with SD Eibar in 2022. Two years there, from 2022 to 2024, gave him what young goalkeepers crave most: games, mistakes, recoveries, and the rhythm of a full season. No Champions League anthems, no giant billboards. Just the grind of La Liga 2, week after week.
His performances earned him another move within the division, this time to Granada CF, where he currently plays. Again, it is not the glamorous route many imagined when he first pulled on a Real Madrid shirt. It is, however, a real footballer’s journey: loans, second tiers, long trips, and dressing rooms where reputations mean less than the saves you make on Saturday.
A different shirt, a different anthem
The international switch last September marked the clearest break from the path many assumed he would follow. While Zinedine Zidane prepares to lead France as head coach, Luca has already chosen Algeria, the country that shaped part of his father’s identity long before the French No 10 became a global icon.
At this World Cup, Luca stood in goal for Algeria as the starting goalkeeper, playing through a recent chin and jaw injury. It was a defiant statement of commitment, and a reminder that his career is not a footnote to his father’s. It is its own story, written in smaller stadiums and under a different flag.
Now, as one Zidane prepares to command the France bench until 2030 and another continues to battle in La Liga 2 with Granada CF, the family name stretches across two nations, two projects, and two very different pressures. One will be judged by trophies. The other, by the quiet, unforgiving standards of a goalkeeper’s life.
