Real Madrid | Open letter from Zidane: “I’m leaving because the club doesn’t give me the confidence I need”

Dear madridistas,

For twenty years, from first day in which I set foot in the city of Madrid and dressed in the White T-shirt You have given me your love. I’ve always felt that there was something very special between us. I have had the great honor of being player Y trainer of the most important club in history, but above all I am just another Real Madrid player. For all this I wanted to write you this letter to say goodbye of you and explain my decision to leave the bench.

When in March of 2019 i accepted re-train to Madrid after a break of about eight months it was because the president Florentino Pérez asked me toof course, but also because you told me every day. When I met one of you on the street, I felt the support and the desire to see myself with the team again. Because I share the values ​​of madridismo, this club that belongs to its members, to its fans, to the whole world. I have tried to transmit these values ​​myself in everything I have done, I have tried be an example. Spending twenty years in Madrid has been the most beautiful thing that has happened to me in my life and I know that I own him exclusively to Florentino Pérez who bet on me in 2001, who fought for me, to make me come when there were certain people who were against it. I mean it from my heart, always I will be grateful to taken thus. Forever.

Now I have decided to leave and I want explain the reasons well. I’m leaving, but I’m not jumping off the boat and I’m not tired of training. On May 2018 I left because after two and a half years with so many victories and so many trophies I felt that the team needed a new discourse to stay on top. Today things are different. I’m leaving because I feel that the club yes it does not give me the confidence that I need, does not offer me the support to build something in the medium or long term. I know football and I know the demands of a club like Madrid, I know that when you don’t win you have to go. But here a very important thing has been forgotten, has forgotten everything what I have built on a day-to-day basis, what I have contributed in the relationship with the players, with the one hundred and fifty people who work with and around the team. I am a born winner and I was here to conquer trophies, but beyond this there are human beings, emotions, life and I have the feeling that these things have not been valued, that it has not been understood that this also maintains the dynamics of a great club. Even, in a way, I have been reproached.

I want to be respected what we have done together. I would have liked that in the last months my relationship with the club and with the president it would have been a little different to that of other coaches. He was not asking for privileges, of course not, but a little more memory. Today the life of a coach on the bench of a great club is one of of the seasons, not much more. So that last longer the human relationships are essentialThey are more important than money, more important than fame, more important than everything. You have to take care of them. So it hurt me a lot when I read in the press, after a defeat, that they were going to kick me out if he didn’t win the next game. It hurt me and the whole team because these filtered messages intentionally the media created negative interference with the staff, they created doubts and misunderstandings. Good thing I had some wonderful boys who were to death with me. When things got ugly they saved me with great victories. Because they believed in me and they knew that I believed in them. Of course I’m not the best coach in the world but I am capable of giving the strength and confidence that everyone needs in their work, be they a player, a member of the coaching staff or any employee. I know exactly what a team needs. Throughout these twenty years in Madrid I have learned that you, the fans, you want to win, of course you do, but above all you want us to give it our all, the coach, the staff, the workers and of course the footballers. And I can assure you that we have given 100% of ourselves for the club.

I also take advantage of this letter to send a message to the journalists. I have done hundreds of press conferences and unfortunately we have talked very little about football and I know that you also love football, that this sport unites us. However, without pretending to criticize you or give you lessons, I would have liked the questions they were not always directed towards controversy, that we would have talked more often about the ball and above all about the players, who are and always will be the most important in this game. Let’s not forget football let’s take care of football.

Dear madridistas, always i will be one of you.

¡Hala Madrid!

Zinedine Zidane