Newsletter

For Real Madrid, Zidane, always his extra thing

“It’s even more fun to win this Liga than winning the Champions League.” By what end we take it, the title of champion of Spain won Thursday by Real Madrid by Zinédine Zidane after a victory (2-1) against Villarreal will always come back to stick to these words dropped by his coach, three times crowned on the European front (2016, 2017 and 2018), while the trophy never ceased to pass from hand to hand in his locker room in defiance of the most basic barrier gestures.

Why on earth a coach installed on the roof of Europe, capable of resuscitating in 2016 – and lastingly, again – a workforce worn down to the weft to dislodge everything that the continent has terrors (Atlético Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern Munich , Juventus de Turin) without failing for twenty-eight months can he favor a national title won twice in front of anyone, empty stands (behind closed doors requires) and FC Barcelona gangrened to the bone, where the management hires pharmacies to destroy the image of its stars on social networks and where Lionel Messi, seated on a salary of nearly 100 million euros annually (Neymar is more than 30 at Paris-SG, Kylian Mbappé at almost 20), devour coaches and teammates according to their moods of the moment?

A relatively ordinary team

As is often the case with Zidane, it is always either much simpler than what you think you are guessing, or infinitely more complicated – nothing in between. For simplicity, the maestro mentioned the very specific conditions of the current exercise, the competitions having been cryogenized in March before resuming suddenly in May, with collective training almost nonexistent and without preparation matches: “We have just succeeded in an extraordinary thing. Win ten games out of ten after almost three months off [d’entraînements ou de matchs, ndlr] after confinement, I find that impressive. I can’t find the words because I have too many emotions. Of course I have a role, I am the coach, but it was the players who went for this title. I am proud of them, proud of how they fought on the pitch. ” Postcoronavirus football is like nothing else: the people of Madrid have been able to surf on it better than the others.

In mortar: this season, the team often appeared in difficulty, before and after confinement. It took willpower, energy, a few benevolent whistles from the referees (“Don’t be disrespectful”, retorted Zidane ten days ago to a journalist talking about the subject) and the magic of a systematically decisive Karim Benzema, author of two goals (including a penalty) on Thursday. The “Emotions” about which Zidane speaks thus take their source in the relatively ordinary character of the team which he found in 2019 after having left in May 2018, annoyed to be too put on the grill by his management for his taste.

Zidane, a bubble of doubt and hypersensitivity

However, these emotions light up a dark corner. They hollow out the reality of a man in a bubble that he shares with his very closest (his assistant David Bettoni, the physiotherapist Hamidou Msaidie…), far from the gold of contemporary football, where Zidane is considered as a prodigy who will succeed whatever he does ; a cliché awkwardly lit Thursday by the president of Madrid, Florentino Pérez, when he explains that his trainer is “blessed by the gods”.

A bubble of doubt and hypersensitivity to the slightest change in temperature in the locker room, which requires looking at yourself in a mirror every day and understanding that it will be necessary to tighten the game and switch to a more austere expression since Cristiano Ronaldo and his 50 goals per season (the little years) went into exile in Turin, while working on collective “matter” through the importance given to the players in the shadows; the Brazilian Casemiro in 2016, the Uruguayan Federico Valverde (22) this fall.

For Griezmann, the end of carelessness

The media development of football unfolds a story. Zidane writes another. And Antoine Griezmann yet another, symbol of an FC Barcelona (that the tricolor world champion joined last summer) which fails in second place, completely withdrawn as soon as we touch the holy of holies – Messi’s football sensitivity at best, Messi’s friends at worst – and who seems to be losing strength season after season.

While the attacking leader of the Blues of 1998 was going to tap into the mysteries of the game to win the title, his counterpart of 2018 collided in Catalonia with the multiple strata of a system difficult to read, relegated to the bench of substitutes for almost a month: welcome to the adult world, infinitely less benevolent than a blue house made to measure by the three-color coach Didier Deschamps or an Atlético Madrid where Griezmann set the tone between 2012 and 2019.

In Barcelona: the end of the carefree attitude of a light player, asphyxiated by this damn position game (the player holds a fixed place, he is forced) which holds the Catalan collective. In Madrid: a Zidane who will always look deeper, always something else, to win in pain. Either the world title of the Blues of 2018 and that of 1998 which take shape in hollow through the fate of their respective beachhead, distant echo of the struggle between aesthetics (Griezmann) and lyricism.

Grégory Schneider

.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending