He’s the man to lift the United gloom
REPLAcinG Jose Mourinho with Zinedine Zidane at Manchester united would be like opening a pair of heavy curtains at old Trafford. Daylight would pour in. Few coaches contrast the gloom that seems to hang over Mourinho at the moment more than Zidane. He smiled his way through most of his two-and-a-half years at Real Madrid without so much as a curled-lip snarl, winning nine trophies in the process.
The relationship with the players would be different. He wanted Real to sign Paul Pogba in 2016 and if finally they would be working together, the connection would be immediate.
Zidane’s training ground presence alone would lift the club. Watching the session that preceded Real travelling to Kiev for the champions League final against Liverpool last season illustrated that, with the Frenchman pinging crosses to the edge of the six-yard box for cristiano Ronaldo to volley in.
A good relationship with the players was not limited to the superstars. Zidane defended all of them at Real, in much the same way Mourinho did in his early days at Porto, chelsea and inter Milan.
When the club wanted to sign a goalkeeper last January — Kepa Arrizabalaga, who ho eventur eventually joined chelsea this summer — he vetoed it out of loyalty to the players ayers he already had and a sense that the group he started the campaign n with should be the one he e finished it with.
He was not every player’s best friend but even when relations were strained with James Rodriguez and Gareth Bale, grievances were never publicly aired. The days of taunting united for ‘park the bus’ tactics s would be over. His team attacked ed to the point of defensive negligence gliat times last season. Real conceded 15 goals more than n Barceit Barcelona and 22 more than Atletico Madrid.
He trusted his players to score more than the opposition and that philosophy worked in the champions League at least, although often because of moments of individual brilliance as opposed to choreographed team play finely tuned on the training ground. united would not be getting their own Pep Guardiola in a coaching sense but it would be a mistake to dismiss Zidane as no more than a grinning genius with all his brains in his boots and no greater football vision.
‘You can only call a champions League winner lucky once,’ said former Real player Predrag Mijatovic. Zidane won it three times as well as La Liga in 2017.
if there was a secret to those triumphs it was the communion he had with his most important players, again something Mourinho once had but seems to have lost. Zidane had been team-mates in his last playing days at Real with sergio Ramos and their union was unbreakable. He also had a close bond with Raphael Varane, forged when he called him to persuade him to join the club in 2011. He had to ring back when Varane put the phone down because he thought it was a practical joke. united wanted Varane too that summer but Real got their man thanks to Zidane’s charisma. it would be b hard work building similar relation relationships with Phil Jones, chris smal smalling, Eric Bailly and Victor Lind Lindelof. And there is no evidence to suggest he would transform any o of them or that he would not end u up asking for much the same as M Mourinho: a finished article central defender in his first transfer window. And if he felt that he was not being b backed he would not hang around. a When he walked away from fro Real in the summer fatigue was wa only half the reason. He had not liked l the plans for the coming campaign campa with Keylor navas to be replaced, Ronaldo to be allowed to leave and no move for Eden Hazard because money was being held for the arrival of neymar in 2019. united will not be able to woo him solely with a huge contract. He tore up the two years he had left on his £8million-a-season deal when he quit Real, so money is not a priority. Those close to him say he has been in no rush to return since walking away from Madrid. The France job would have appealed had Didier Deschamps not won the World cup. united would have to sell the job to him. Make us exciting again would be one way of doing it. Zidane outside the confines of Real — would it work? The only guarantee is that it would not be joyless.