Zinedine Zidane Becomes Manager of French National Team
For years, the question followed Zinedine Zidane everywhere he went. After the Champions League trophies, after the parades in Madrid, after the brief sabbaticals that never quite silenced the rumours: when will he take France?
Now the answer is here. The boy from Marseille, the playmaker who carried a nation in 1998 and 2000, is back where he always believed his journey would end – at the head of the French national team.
“It’s often said it: there’s nothing greater than the French National Team,” Zidane told the FFF’s official channels, and it didn’t sound like a line. It sounded like a conviction that has been building for decades. “It is therefore a joy and, of course, a great source of pride to become the manager of this French National Team.”
Joy. Pride. Then, immediately, responsibility.
Zidane was careful to frame the handover with respect. Didier Deschamps, his former midfield partner and long-time national coach, leaves behind fourteen years of work and a trophy cabinet that reshaped French football’s modern history. Zidane, never one for grandstanding, made sure that service sat front and centre.
“I want to thank President Philippe Diallo, the Executive Committee, and the French Football Federation for their confidence and to acknowledge the fourteen years of service from Didier and his staff,” he said. He widened the lens further: “I also have a special thought today for all my coaches. Needless to say, I have high ambitions for the French National Team.”
The ambition is not new. The timing is.
Zidane has been courted repeatedly at club level since his last spell at Real Madrid, where he turned a dressing room of egos into a machine that devoured European nights. He could have slipped back into that world with ease. Instead, he waited.
Speaking at his unveiling press conference, he admitted as much. “There is a great team here, and I am happy to be able to build on this continuity. It is a dream come true,” he said, before revealing the scale of his commitment to that dream. “I can tell you that I received offers to manage clubs, but I turned them all down for the French national team. It was the only thing I wanted to do after my time at Real Madrid.”
That is a striking line from a coach who could walk into almost any dressing room in Europe. He chose one: Clairefontaine, the tricolore, La Marseillaise.
The bond runs deep. Zidane spoke of his relationship with the national shirt in the way only someone who has carried it at its heaviest moments can. “I knew the French national team when I was a kid, and I went through every stage until reaching the senior team,” he said. From the youth ranks to the World Cup final, from the adoration to the infamy of 2006, he has lived every extreme the jersey can offer.
Now comes a different vantage point. The suit, not the No. 10. The technical area, not the centre circle.
“Today, becoming its manager represents the pinnacle,” he said. Not Madrid. Not club football’s glittering carousel. France. “I will give everything to keep France at the top.”
That last promise is where the romance meets the reality. Zidane inherits a squad stacked with talent and expectation, a team already operating at the game’s summit. Continuity, as he pointed out, will matter. So will evolution. The standards Deschamps set are brutal: finals, titles, deep tournament runs as a baseline.
Zidane has chased the biggest stages his entire career and usually bent them to his will. Now he steps into the one job he always treated as sacred. The question no longer is whether he would take France.
It’s what heights he can take them to now that he finally has.
