Zinédine Zidane to participate financially in the recovery of Union Foot de Touraine (National 3), which aims at the professional level.
In February 2025, the executive committee of the French Football Federation ended Tour FC’s hopes of continuing to exist. Then in Regional 1, the Touraine club was already under judicial liquidation and then permanently closed its doors.
Starting from scratch, the club joined forces with Joué-lès-Tours and the Football Club de l’Ouest Tourangeau to form the Union Foot de Touraine. This grouping evolves into National 3 but sees higher. And Zinédine Zidane decided to help him.
As told by L’Équipe this Tuesday, the 1998 world and 2000 European champion with the Blues contributed 10,000 euros to help the project take off. And the sports site added that “Zizou” had acted in this way out of friendship for Franck Riboud, former CEO of Danone. Because it was the latter’s son, Basile Riboud, who founded the UFT with the ambition of moving up to the professional level.
Zinédine Zidane, not a first
For now, the Touraine club occupies an encouraging second place in Group B of its championship, only one unit behind the leader, Challans. Zinédine Zidane is far from being the only one to have heated up the card. Sébastien Bazin, former manager of PSG and CEO of the Accor hotel group, is one of the other donors. Also cited are Olivier Pickeu, general manager of the UFT.
The Riboud family has already worked in the past with a club that started from below to reach Ligue 1: Évian-Thonon-Gaillard. And Zinédine Zidane was already there. The idea with Union Foot de Touraine is therefore to climb the ladder towards the professional level and to continue to attract financial partners likely to help it in this enterprise.
