Zinedine Zidane (born 23 June 1972) is a
retired French footballer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest
players of all time. Zidane was a leading figure of a generation
of French players that won the 1998 World Cup and 2000
European Championship. After a brief international retirement, he returned to
the national team in 2005 and captained France to the 2006 World Cup
Final where he won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s most
outstanding player. At club level Zidane won the La Liga and
the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid, two Serie
A league championships with Juventus, an Intercontinental Cup,
and a UEFA Super Cup each with both aforementioned sides. He is,
alongside Brazilian striker Ronaldo, the only three-time FIFA World
Player of the Year winner; he also won the Ballon d’Or in 1998.
He retired from professional football after the 2006 World Cup. He
currently holds the post of Real Madrid Director of Football, filling the spot
previously held by Jorge Valdano.
Zidane is of Kabyle Berber descent. His
parents, Smaïl and Malika, emigrated to Paris from the village ofAguemone
in the Berber-speaking region of Kabylia in
eastern Algeria, in 1953 before the start of the Algerian War. The
family, which had settled in the city’s tough northern districts
of Barbès and Saint-Denis, found little work in the region. So
in the mid-1960s, they moved to the northern Marseille suburb of La
Castellane where, on 23 June 1972, Zidane was born as the youngest of five
siblings. Zidane’s father Smaïl worked as a warehouseman at a department store,
often on the night shift, while his mother was a housewife. The family
lived in so small a tower-block apartment in the housing complex that he, his
parents, three brothers and one sister had to sit down to eat in shifts. Yet,
due to his father’s steady job, the family lived a reasonably comfortable life
by the standards of the neighbourhood, which was notorious throughout Marseille
for its high crime and unemployment rates.
At the age of ten, Zidane got his first player’s license
after joining the junior team of a local club from La Castellane by the name of
US Saint-Henri. After spending a year and a half at US Saint-Henri, Zidane
joined SO Septèmes Valons when the Septèmes coach Robert Centenero convinced
the club’s Director to get Zidane. It was at La Castellane that Zidane had his
earliest introduction to football, joining in at the age of five, in football
games that the neighbourhood’s children played on the Place Tartane, an
80-by-12-yard plaza that served as the main square of the housing
complex. In July 2011, Zidane named Blaž Slišković, Enzo Francescoli and Jean-Pierre
Papin as his idols while growing up
Zidane went to Cannes for a six-week stay, but ended up
remaining at the club for four years to play at the professional level. Having
left his family at the age of fourteen to join Cannes, the youngster was
invited by Cannes director Jean-Claude Elineau, to leave the dormitory he
shared with 20 other trainees and to come and stay with him and his family.
Zidane later said that it was in living with the Elineaus that he found
equilibrium. Zidane stayed with Septèmes till the of fourteen,
at which time he was selected to attend a three-day training camp at
the CREPS (Regional Centre for Sports and Physical Education)
in Aix-en-Provence, one of several such footballing institutes run by
the French Football Federation. It was here that Zidane was spotted by AS
Cannes scout Jean Varraud who recommended him to the training center
director of the club.
Zidane made his professional debut with Cannes on 18 May
1989 at the age of seventeen in a Ligue 1 match
against Nantes. He scored his first goal for the club on 8 February
1991 also against Nantes in a 2–1 win. After the match during a party for all
the Cannes players, Zidane was gifted a car by Cannes chairman Alain Pedretti,
who had promised him one the day he scored his first goal for the club. In
his first full season with Cannes, the club secured its first ever European
football berth by qualifying for the UEFA Cup after finishing 4th in
the league. This remains the club’s highest finish in the top flight since
getting relegated for the first time from the first division in the 1948–49
season. Zidane was transferred to Girondins de Bordeaux in the
1992–93 season, winning the 1995 Intertoto Cup and finishing
runner-up in the 1995–96 UEFA Cup in four years with the club. He
played a set of midfield combinations with Bixente
Lizarazu and Christophe Dugarry, which would become the trademark of
both Bordeaux and the 1998 French national team. In 1995, Blackburn Rovers
coach Ray Harford had expressed interest in signing both
Zidane and Dugarry, to which team ownerJack Walker reportedly
replied, ”Why do you want to sign Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood”
In 1996, Zidane moved to UEFA Champions League winners Juventus
for a fee of £3.2 million and won the 1996–97 Serie A
and the 1996 Intercontinental Cup, but lost the 1997 UEFA
Champions League Final 3–1 to Borussia Dortmund. The following
season, Zidane netted 7 goals in 32 matches in the league to help Juventus win
the 1997–98 Serie A and thus retain the Scudetto. In Europe,
Juventus made their third consecutive UEFA Champions League
Final appearance, but lost the game 1–0 to Real Madrid, a
club Zidane would later join. Juventus finished second in the 2000–01
Serie A, but were eliminated in the group stage of the Champions League after
Zidane was banned for head-butting Hamburger SV player Jochen
Kientz. However Zidane was named Serie A Foreign Footballer of the
Year for the second time.
While Zidane’s final season of club football ended
trophyless, he enjoyed success on a personal note recording the
maiden hat-trick of his career, scoring thrice against Sevilla
FC in a 4–2 win in January 2006. He ended the season for Real Madrid
as their second highest goal scorer and assists provider behind
team-mates Ronaldo and Beckham respectively, with 9 goals and
10 assists in 28 games. On 7 May 2006, Zidane, who had announced his plans
to retire after the 2006 World Cup, played his last home match and scored
in a 3–3 draw with Villarreal CF. The squad wore commemorative shirts
with ZIDANE 2001–2006 below the club logo. In 2001, Zidane
joined Real Madrid for a then world record fee of
150 billion Italian lire (about €75 million) and signed a
four-year contract. He scored a famous match-winning goal, a volley hit with
his weaker foot, in Madrid’s 2–1 win over Bayer Leverkusen in
the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final completing his personal
quadruple. The next season, Zidane helped Real Madrid to win the 2002–03
La Liga and was named the FIFA World Player of the Year for the
third time. In 2004, fans voted him as the best European footballer of the
previous 50 years in UEFA’s fiftieth-anniversaryGolden Jubilee Poll.
Both France and Algeria consider Zidane a citizen, but
he was ineligible to play for the Algerian national team. There was a
rumour that coach Abdelhamid Kermali denied Zidane a position for the
Algerian squad because he felt the young midfielder was not fast
enough. However, Zidane dismissed the rumour in a 2005 interview, saying
that he would have been ineligible to play for Algeria because he had already
played for France. He earned his first cap with France as a
substitute in a friendly against the Czech Republic on 17
August 1994, which ended in a 2–2 draw after Zidane scored twice to help France
erase a 2–0 deficit. After Éric Cantona was handed a year-long
suspension in January 1995 for assaulting a fan, Zidane took over the playmaker
position. France were eliminated in the Euro 96 semi-finals in
a penalty shootout by the Czech Republic after the match ended 0–0
in extra time.
Zidane and France went on to play against defending
champions and favourites Brazil at the Stade de France in
the 1998 FIFA World Cup Final. France dominated Brazil from the kick-off,
with Zidane scoring two identical goals, both headers from corner kicks taken
by Emmanuel Petit and Youri Djorkaeff. Courtesy of Zidane’s
brace, France went into the break 2–0 up at half-time with one hand already on
the World Cup trophy. Emmanuel Petit added a third goal deep in stoppage
time to seal the 3–0 win and France’s first ever World Cup. Zidane became an
instant national hero and his image was projected onto the Arc de
Triomphe.
Two years later France won Euro 2000, becoming the
first team to hold both the World Cup and the European Championship
since West Germany in 1974. Zidane finished with two goals, a
memorable free kick against Spain in the quarter final and
the golden goal in the semi final against Portugal, and was
named player of the tournament by UEFA. The 1998 FIFA World Cup was
the first World Cup that Zidane participated in. It was held in his home
country France. The French team won all three games in the group stage but
Zidane was sent off in the second match against Saudi
Arabia for a stamp on Fuad Anwar, becoming the first French player to
receive a red card in a World Cup finals. Without their suspended playmaker
France proceeded to win 1–0 in the last sixteen game against Paraguay
and, on his return to the side, defeated Italy 4–3 on
penalties after a goalless draw in the quarter finals. France then
defeated Croatia 2–1 in the semi final. Zidane played a major role
in the team’s accomplishment, though he had yet to score a goal at the World
Cup.
As reigning world and European champions, France entered
the 2002 World Cup as favourites but a thigh injury prevented Zidane
from playing in France’s first two matches and without their talisman the
French team failed to score in either match. He was rushed back prematurely for
the third game despite not being fully fit, but could not prevent France from
being ignominiously eliminated in the group stage without scoring a single
goal; the worst performance by a defending champion in the history of the
competition. At Euro 2004, France topped their group with wins over
England and Switzerland, before being knocked out in the quarter finals by
eventual champions Greece in a surprise 1-0 loss. In the opening
match against England, Zidane scored a free kick and penalty in stoppage
time to turn defeat into a 2–1 victory for France. After France’s elimination
Zidane announced his retirement from international football.