ZIDANE STILL DEFIANT BUT LEGACY’S IN REAL DANGER
HE has won the Champions League four times with Real Madrid – once as a player, scoring a volley of invincible quality, and a hat-trick as coach.
But tonight Zinedine Zidane (above) faces unprecedented humiliation in Europe.
ZZ Top could win the race to the bottom – and become the club’s first coach who fails to qualify for the knockout stages in a football giant’s proud history.
While former king of the Galacticos, Cristiano Ronaldo, was going head-tohead with old rival Lionel Messi at the BarcelonaJuventus tie in the Nou Camp last night – both teams are already through
– it was five to midnight at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Messi and Ronaldo are going to the ball but Zidane’s side have become the ugly sisters of Europe’s elite.
And a Champions League knockout phase without Real Madrid would be like the Tower of London with no crown jewels.
If they fail to reach the last 16, Real will look back in anguish at the 3-2 home defeat by Shakhtar Donetsk, when the Ukrainians were missing 10 players through injury and positive Covid-19 tests.
Then last week in the return match, Shakhtar beat them 2-0.
For Zidane, this evening is a moment of reckoning. Real could still win a desperately tight group, but defeat against Borussia Moenchengladbach could also spell the end of his second coming as Los Merengues manager.
If this is the end, the 1998 World Cup winner will not fall on his sword quietly. “I will not resign,” he insisted. “I have the strength to continue, I will give it everything – and so will the players.”
The most difficult moment in his career?
“For sure – but it’s like always,” said Zidane. “We’ve had difficult times in the past, now we’re in the present and it’s more difficult but I feel strong and the players will give us the possibility to get through this tough spell.
“I feel the support from the club and from everyone. I can’t be happy when we lose but we know where we are – and we are fortunate to be at this club.” Asked last week if he felt untouchable, Zidane bristled and replied: “I never felt I was. Never. Not as a player, a coach or person. I’m here for a reason – to win – and I will be until the last day.”
It is fair to say Zidane (above) – who delivered Real’s 34th La Liga crown in July, their first for three years – has occasionally been dealt a duff hand by providence in the last 18 months.
Selling Ronaldo to the Old Lady of Turin immediately deprived him of up to 50 goals a season. Eden Hazard, the £100million marquee signing brought in to replace Ronaldo’s stardust, has suffered an injury-hit spell in Spain, limiting him to just 28 appearances since he left Chelsea in June 2019.
Zidane’s capricious relationship with Gareth Bale was finally parked when the Wales captain returned to Tottenham on loan, and Real failed to land one of his main transfer targets, Paul Pogba, last summer amid budget cuts of around £230m because of the pandemic and stadium redevelopment.
It is of little comfort to Zidane, 48, that his counterpart Ronald Koeman is also under pressure with arch-rivals Barca 12 points off the pace in La Liga – because the leaders, who have conceded just two goals in 10 games, are just across the city at the Wanda Metropolitano.
Atletico Madrid winning the title would be unbearable for Real supporters with a superiority complex in the capital; but going out of the Champions League in the group phase would be simply unthinkable.
Even if he survives his tightrope walk against Moenchengladbach, Zidane faces another momentous trial of public opinion in the derby with Atletico on Saturday.
And for ZZ, the pressure isn’t going to subside if he slips inside a sleeping bag and waits for it to go away.