So… you know what upsets me? How people act like Zidane was this natural talent, who had it so easy, you know? They act like he came out of the womb wearing a Juventus shirt… when really, he was already 25 when he first stepped foot in Italy… That’s 8 seasons and 265 matches… but still… If you ask most football fans, they know nothing about it… If you’re lucky you’ll get the same old story about how, 1 year before his move to Turin, Kenny Dalglish had asked the owner of Blackburn to sign Zidane, only for him to reply: “Why do you want to sign “Zidane” when we have Tim Sherwood?
”. . .
And that’s exactly where the problem lies… As one newspaper put it “Though the world has now decided that he is unanimously great, Zidane was a hard code to decipher at first, as all one of a kind footballers are”. . .
Zidane was weird… Forget the “untrained eye”, even the greatest talent scouts in the world could not see past what they claimed was a “lanky, sluggish midfielder with no personality or grit”. . .
Even Arsene Wenger, the same man who spotted some french kid struggling in Italy and turned him into the deadliest striker the Premier League had ever seen… Even he turned down Zidane when he was back at Monaco… In fact… for a long time, there were only a few people who seemed to truly realize the potential he had… You see, after France won the Euro 2000, most players just went about celebrating any way they could… But Zidane, the player of the tournament, the one who had carried them to glory… he drove down to Marseille because before he even went on holiday, he wanted to hug his mom… As a member of the french staff once said: “Zidane is the superstar who could be your next-door neighbor”. . .
In fact, his quiet, withdrawn, almost timid personality was one of the things that made his talent so difficult to spot… While most all time greats seem to be these larger than life personalities… Zidane just wanted a hug from his mom… But that wasn’t the point… what I meant to tell you was that, while he was down there, he got the news that a man named Robert Centenero was in the hospital struggling for his life… and Zidane did not even think twice, he postponed his holiday and kept him company for what were the last few days of his life… But why was he so important to him? Well… Back when Zinedine was still Yazid… because believe it or not, he didn’t like his first name when he was a kid… Centenero was the first person to scout Yazid and even if the best he could do was take him to a tiny local club, Séptemes de Vallons… it meant a lot to him, as he would say: “He did everything for me… He’d drive me to training, he would even give me money so that I could buy food on the weekends. He was like a father to me”.
. . And it was even thanks to Centenero, that Yazid met maybe the only man who would have an even bigger impact on his career… Monsieur Varraud… About a year after the two met, Centenero convinced Yazid to take part in a tournament organized by AS Cannes where schoolboys teamed up in hopes of getting scouted, but unfortunately for Yazid, he was benched… but just as it seemed he would not even get a chance to shine, the boy who was playing in his position broke his wrist and was taken to the hospital, so Yazid took over his role and put down an immense performance… only there was no one there to watch him… The scout on duty that day was the famous Monsieur Varraud and unfortunately for Yazid he had offered to drive the injured kid to a clinic, so he never saw him… In fact, it took 2 years and 3 months for the two to cross paths again… and how did it happen?
Well, Monsieur Varaud was in the region to watch a trial for an inter league tournament but then the player he was supposed to watch was benched, so he wandered around the premises until he spotted none other than the father of the boy that he had driven to the hospital years earlier, so the two got to talking while watching the kids play, until one stood out so much to Varraud, that he asked: “who is number 13? ” and the man told him: “That’s the kid who replaced my son when you helped us, don’t you remember him? His name is Yazid”.
. . By the end of that match, even though Yazid was not even picked by the organizers of the trial, Varraud was convinced he had spotted the next french great, as he said “He had hands where his feet were supposed to be”.
. . Just imagine if they had never crossed paths again… Regardless, not authorized to bring players to the club, Varraud convinced one of the directors at Cannes to come down to watch the kid and in Yazid’s own words: “I remember that game… I wasn’t too good, they played me all the way back in defense, but I wanted to impress so badly, I risked everything… One time I tried to pull off a sombrero in my own box, lost the ball and pretty much gave a goal away… I don’t know what they saw that day, but in the end they still wanted me”.
. . In fact, the director who watched him that day, Jean Claude Elineau, wanted him at his club so bad that when his parents began insisting that they didn’t want him living in an academy without proper parental figures around… He invited him to stay in the bedroom of his own son who had left for the military, pretty much raising him alongside his two other kids… and let me tell you, as quiet as he was, that would still be no easy task, because as we all know by now Yazid had a temper… If anyone ever dared mock his family or his origins in the ghetto, Yazid would not talk back, he would hit back… And indeed, It wasn’t long before he was sent off for punching a player, but thankfully, again, he had someone by his side, as Jean Claude told him: “This is the curse of the gifted player… You will have to learn to ignore their words or you will spend the rest of your life on the sidelines, watching others play… If you need to let off some steam, just scrub the locker rooms or something… I don’t know”.
. . That last part was supposed to be just a bunch of empty words, but Yazid took them literally, the next day, after everyone left, they found him there, with a bucket and a mop… as one of the coaches would say: “Yazid was an example… He barely spoke, he always listened and then he acted”.
. . However, Yazid was far from “making it”, in fact around that same time, he got called up for the French under-17s for the first time but even then they mixed up his name with someone else and sent him a letter addressed to “Sincédrie Zidane”.
. . that’s how irrelevant he was back then… In fact, it would probably have taken ages before he made it to the first team had it not been for Monsieur Varraud yet again… as the senior team manager would tell the story: “One day, Varraud came, asking me to come see this kid training in the pitch next to ours, I kept telling him that I was tired, that I needed to go home, that I’d see him another time… but he insisted so much that even though I didn’t want to, I gave it a look… and for 25 minutes, I could not take my eyes off him… I was mesmerized… As I stood there, a board member walked by and said “You’re looking at that Under 18, uh?
He seems really good”. . .
What he didn’t realize was that Yazid was still only 16…” Regardless, from that day onwards, Yazid began training with the first team and only a few months later he got his debut… In fact when he got handed five thousand euros of prize money for his first appearance, as he said it himself: “It was 5 or 6 times more money than I had in my account so I thought “This time, I’m gonna buy myself something nice” so I went to the Levi’s store and got a new pair of pants… the rest I sent to my mom… Regardless, that was the day I realized that I really could go pro”. . .
And so, even when the board came in his way and pretty much banned the coach from playing Yazid, calling him a “dancer”, claiming that a team who was fighting to stay up could not be putting the club’s fate in the hands of some kid, even saying that they weren’t spending a fortune on wages, just for the more experienced players to stay on the bench … But regardless, Yazid didn’t care, once again he put his head down and outworked everyone… Every day he stayed behind in training practicing his touch against a wall and after a season without playing a single minute, they finally caved in and let him play… and as Ibrahimovic would go on to say: “When Zidane stepped onto the pitch, the 10 other guys suddenly got better. It is that simple. It was magic.
” and that was exactly what happened… That year Yazid finally became Zidane…And not only did Cannes play the greatest league campaign in their history, but he was by far the protagonist… He went as far as making sure that the only goal he scored, the first of his career, was named the goal of the year… It was a goal so impressive for a kid his age that the president of the club even gave him a red Renault Clio as reward, since after all he had noticed that, at that point, Zidane didn’t even have his own car… By the end, though it had been 44 years since Cannes had last managed to even place in the league’s top 10, suddenly they were in 4th place and had qualified for the UEFA Cup… and as you might imagine, this attracted a lot of attention, especially from Marseille, who not only was Zidane’s childhood club and had won the league, but had also just made it to the final of the Champions League… There was only one problem… At that point, Zidane was out on mandatory military service and thought they would still allow him to travel back and forth so he could play for his team… It wouldn’t be until new year’s before he got discharged so Marseille decided to wait it out… But unfortunately, by then, with Zidane having to split his time between the army and the club, Cannes’ performances had dropped massively, being knocked out in the second round of the UEFA Cup and sitting all the way down below the relegation line… Suddenly, Zidane didn’t look as appealing as before, so they began working out a deal where they would get him for a smaller fee after sending their new signing Alen Boksic on loan to Cannes… but in the middle of it all, Lyon got upset as they had lost on the signing of Boksic only for Marseille to send him on loan immediately, which, at the time was illegal… and just as they decided wether or not to sue them… Boksic just happened to debut precisely as Cannes faced Lyon and ended up getting their keeper sent off and costing them points, which sent them off the edge, eventually winning the lawsuit and getting all of those deals cancelled… Meaning that by the end of the year, with Zidane having struggling to get back in form and even picking up an injury, Marseille went back on their word and refused to sign him, with their manager even claiming that he was “too slow”. . .
As Marseille were mere months away from winning the Champions League, Zidane was on his way to the second tier… Only a year after tasting glory for the first time, Zidane was back to being a nobody… But that’s exactly when a miracle happened… With Cannes struggling financially, Bordeaux’s entourage met with them in an attempt to poach two of their players, Jean-François Daniel and Eric Guérit… but once the meeting started, the Cannes representatives began naming all the players they were willing to let go off, and in the words of their manager Rolland Courbis: “Once I heard the name Zidane, I began massacring the president’s toes under the table… 5 minutes later, for a small check of 3 million francs, we left with Zizou in our basket”. . .
Obviously, joining newly promoted Bordeaux was not even close to what Zidane expected from that season, but first of all, at least he was still at the top tier and secondly… Well, waiting for him in that locker room were two guys who would conquer the world alongside him… I’m talking about Cristopher Dugarry and Bixente Lizarazu… The moment those three began joining forces, Zidane hit a whole new level, as one of the coaches at the club said: “When he arrived, we saw an introvert, a kid who doubted himself, but with every single one of us around him, his confidence grew every day, we gave him the self belief he needed to reach his potential”. . .
and Zidane knew this too, as he would say one day: “Bordeaux was precisely what I needed in that moment, not just in football terms, but in my life… There, one way or another, I became a man”. . .
And by the end of the season, he had done it again, Bordeaux were somehow 4th in the league and had qualified for the UEFA Cup… Even more impressive, after insisting all year that he was not an attacking midfielder but actually “a facilitator”. . .
Zidane was Bordeaux's top scorer with 10 league goals… And the next year, though he would have his first moment of madness, punching Desailly in the face midway through a match then he scored past Oliver Kahn and led Bordeaux to revalidate their 4th place finish, meaning that by August, everyone had forgotten about it… not only was Zidane handed the league’s young player of the year award, but he was called up to the French national team for the very first time… and he made sure to make it as memorable as possible… You see, France had not even made it to the previous world cup, which was especially concerning, given that they were hosting the next one… And since they did not wanna get embarrassed in their own turf, Aimé Jacquet had been handed the task of building a new side out of the wreckage of the previous squad, so that day, with Djorkaeff out of the squad, he asked Zidane if he was ready for his debut and in his usually overly humble style, he told him that Corentin Martins was much better prepared for the match, so Jacquet left him on the bench… there was only a little problem… 60 minutes in, they were losing 2 nil to the Czech Republic…. so in a desperate attempt to try to keep France’s pride untouched, Jacquet took the risk of sending Zidane in for Martins and the result was simple… with 5 minutes to go, Zidane took the ball, made it past one, then two and smacked it in from 30 yards out… as everyone expected this kid to lose his mind celebrating, he merely hurried back to the center of the pitch… because his mission wasn’t over… that only came 2 minutes later, when he leveled the match with a bullet header… as the cameras cut to the bench, you could see it in their faces: “We’ve found our man”. .
. Regardless, with Zidane struggling with recurring injuries, the next season, after a disappointing exit in the 2nd round of the UEFA Cup, Bordeaux disappointed even further by dropping down to 7th place in the table… but as it seemed they would be out of the european competitions, they were handed a lifeline as UEFA took over the Intertoto Cup and offered the winner a place in the UEFA Cup… It was right around that moment that Newcastle supposedly were offered the chance to sign Zidane for only 1. 2 million pounds, but as we all know, they did not take it and quickly that proved to be a gigantic mistake… In the first match of the Intertoto, Zidane scored a stunner only 6 minutes in… 8 minutes after that he got an incredible assist… and in the second half not only did he start the counter attack that led to their 4th goal but scored the fifth through some real Zidane magic…and from there on out, he kept going, 3 free kicks scored over the next 3 matches, but once they were in the final… Zidane added a bit of his usual flair, getting a 3 match ban for hitting another player with an elbow to the chin… thankfully that didn’t stop them from winning the whole thing and, ironically, it was right around that time that Cantona was also serving his ban for kung fu kicking a fan… and Zidane made sure to take advantage of his absence to completely cement his position as the new star of the team, not just assisting the opener in their decisive qualifier against Hagi’s Romania but then scoring a stunner to secure their place at the Euros… but hey, if you think that was a beautiful goal, just hear me out… Once he had served his ban, the next round was against Real Betis and not only did he score the winning goal… but the goal itself .
. . .
well it was a 40 yard volley taken straight from a goal kick… If there was a Puskas award back then, he’d probably have won it… but still it was nothing next to what happened in their quarter final match… So look, that year AC Milan somehow ended up in the UEFA Cup, which was especially impressive because they had been to the final of the Champions League in every single one of the previous three seasons… or if you prefer they had been in 5 out of the previous 7 finals… They were basically undefeatable, you could argue they were the scariest team since Di Stefano’s Real Madrid… and to make things worse for Bordeaux… they lost the first leg 2 nil… as one newspaper wrote “Bordeaux and the UEFA Cup were just a palette cleanser to be dispatched before they returned to the high table to swill champagne around their gums again”. . .
There was no hope that they could make a comeback… In fact guess who had been the last team to beat them by 3 goals or more in the Champions League? Di Stefano Real Madrid… yeah… but then well… The Bordeaux players noticed that the Italians were far too relaxed during warm up so they gave it everything they had and 14 minutes in they went in front… In fact, with every passing minute it became more and more obvious that Zidane was the best player on the pitch and by the hour mark, with a bit of help from the referee, he assisted Dugarry and only 6 minutes later he nutmegged Desailly, then glided across the pitch and made the impossible possible… 3 nil for Bordeaux with the entire world watching… And once Zidane assisted Dugarry yet again in the very next game, pretty much putting them in the final, I’m guessing lady luck was done with them… since from there on out, everything went wrong… Zidane and Dugarry missed the first leg of the final through suspension and even once they made it back, first Lizarazu went out injured and then they conceded through a deflection… The result was a 5 to 1 defeat on aggregate… But regardless, at 25 years of age, that run had finally been enough to convince the country of how great Zidane was and so, even after getting involved in a car crash that left him seriously bruised from head to toe, struggling to get back to fitness, Aimé Jacquet did not even think twice, the league’s new player of the year had to be at the Euros… and even through all of that Zidane got within inches of getting them to the final… Still, even with that done, Newcastle once again decided against signing cause they thought he was “overrated”, Sir Alex made the same poor judgment call because “he didn’t wanna upset Cantona”. .
. . but Juventus… they believed he was the key to stop Milan's dominance so they decided to risk it… and once he signed the papers, you know who he called first?
