This time he didn’t surprise anyone. When Zinédine Zidane gave up the Real Madrid bench on May 31, 2018, he made the most beautiful feint of his career, player and coach alike. Five days after a third Champions League, won against Liverpool, he improvises a press conference to announce his departure alongside Florentino Pérez. ” Real Madrid is his home, he will always be welcome ”, then indicates the president of Real.
This home, the 48-year-old technician leaves it a second time. But, this time around, there was no press conference or little tears from the president: an official statement was enough, Thursday, June 27, to confirm a news which had not really been one for several weeks. “Real Madrid announce that Zinédine Zidane has decided to end his current term as coach of our club. ”
Words are important. Under contract until June 2022, the former number 5 of the club (2001-2006) goes on his own. Rather, Mr. Pérez would have opened the exit door for him with his departure gift in his arms.
Zidane knows the rules of the game
Begun, after a short break of nine months, this second term was not a failure, however. The ghost offered a 34etitle of champion of Spain at the club in 2020. This season, Real played a semi-final of the Champions League and contested La Liga against their neighbor Atlético until the last day.
Insufficient for the other “White House”. Zidane knows the rules of the game. At Real, a coach without a title on an exercise is a coach on borrowed time. When he has not already received his balance from any account.
The resigning would have lived badly to find himself threatened several times in recent months
“It’s exhausting being a coach and even more so at Real Madrid”, he confessed in 2018, before throwing in the towel for the first time. Real are a short-cycle club, even more so under the Pérez era. A club where the coach is passing through and must fulfill an almost untenable set of specifications: to win and to seduce.
Zinedine Zidane did it better than others and for longer, but he felt the metallic coldness of the blades of the grinding machine. The press release of the day can always flatter his pride (“A myth of Real Madrid whose legend goes beyond what he was as coach and player of our club”), the resigning would have lived badly to find himself threatened several times in recent months.
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