“You know how it goes: the big­ger the club, the big­ger the egos in the dress­ing room. And you have to deal with it. I liked doing it because I have a back­ground and the guys respect that. And if there is chem­istry between you and the play­ers, and if they like what you want to con­vey, so much the bet­ter.

I’ve always liked the game. I always liked to play. I always trained the guys with the ball, they did­n’t just run around the field. Yes, run­ning is impor­tant, but with the ball. They like it. What I did as a coach is what I liked to do as a play­er. I need a ball so I can do com­mon things and have fun”, Zidane said in a con­ver­sa­tion with Tony Park­er.

The trainer’s work is never interrupted

In Jan­u­ary 2016, Zine­dine Zidane became the head coach of Real Madrid. At that time, the foot­ball team was expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties on all fronts. Despite the neg­a­tive fore­casts, Pres­i­dent Perez expressed full con­fi­dence in Zidane and assessed his trans­fer pol­i­cy as ide­al, which was rec­og­nized by foot­ball experts.

Win­ning two Cham­pi­ons League and Span­ish titles, as well as two UEFA Super Cups, refut­ed the doubts of skep­tics who believed that Zidane could not cope with such a pres­ti­gious team and its star play­ers. The coach prefers to talk less, and his play­ers have learned to read him by his ges­tures and glances. The main prin­ci­ple, accord­ing to Zine­dine, is to pro­tect the inter­ests of the club, which he con­sid­ers the best team of the 20th cen­tu­ry and his home.

Zidane pre­vi­ous­ly spoke about the intri­ca­cies of being a coach to Trans­fer News Live:

“By the end of the sea­son you are even more tired than the play­er. These pro­fes­sions have noth­ing in com­mon. As a play­er, I was focused on my per­for­mance and the team’s per­for­mance. As a coach, you are respon­si­ble for 23 peo­ple.

The coach’s work is nev­er inter­rupt­ed. When I went home, my mind always returned to work. This work fills your entire atten­tion. Infor­ma­tion falls on you, as does the respon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing all deci­sions. This job drains your ener­gy very pow­er­ful­ly.”

In 2017, under the lead­er­ship of Zidane, Real Madrid won the Span­ish cham­pi­onship, the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League, the UEFA Super Cup and the Span­ish Super Cup.

In the 2018–2019 sea­son, Real won the Cham­pi­ons League for the third time in a row, and Zidane made foot­ball his­to­ry by fin­ish­ing third among coach­es to achieve such a result, next to Bob Pais­ley and Car­lo Ancelot­ti.