Zinedine Zidane’s finest hour
21 years ago, Zinedine Zidane inspired France to European Championship glory. Ryan Baldi takes a look back at Zizou’s finest hour
Zinedine Zidane is a difficult man to impress. For his glittering 17-year playing career, the former Real Madrid coach is remembered as one of the finest midfielders in football history. A majestic technician, his central role in title wins in Italy and Spain, as well as Champions League and World Cup triumphs, saw him named FIFA World Player of the Year three times.
And he was the ultimate big-game player: a scorer of three World Cup final goals and, thanks to his spectacular volley against Bayer Leverkusen in 2002, architect of arguably the greatest ever goal scored in a European final.
Yet when Zidane’s multitude of gifts coalesced sublimely in the summer of 2000 for the most exceptional tournament performance of his gilded career – and, it could be argued, the best any player had produced since Diego Maradona at the 1986 World Cup – the Frenchman’s standards were so high that his self-appraisal amounted to little more than a Gallic shrug.
“At Euro 2000 I played well,” he told
The Independent in 2004, “but not brilliantly. I did not always shine.”
Such an assessment might have been fair of Zidane’s role in France’s 1998 World Cup win on home soil when, despite scoring twice in the final, a group-stage red card and subsequent two-match suspension blighted a campaign in which he seldom delivered to his full potential. And to say he had not shone at his previous international tournament, Euro ’96, would be an understatement: a pre-competition car accident affected his fitness and he fell desperately short of the building hype.
At Euro 2000, though, Zidane was nothing short of brilliant. No one – other than the man himself, it would seem – could claim he did not shine.
Circumstances aligned perfectly for Zidane ahead of the tournament to be hosted jointly by the Netherlands and Belgium. At the World Cup two years earlier, France rode to victory on the strength of their solidity. Famously, they were victorious in spite of the fact their main striker, Stephane Guivarc’h, failed to score (just as they would be 20 years later with Olivier Giroud in attack). But in the intervening period, France’s dearth of attacking talent had transformed into their greatest asset. At Euro 2000, Zidane’s creativity in the No1. 0 role would benefit from the pace and movement of four rapid and clinical strikers: Nicolas Anelka, Sylvain Wiltord, David Trezeguet and, primarily, Thierry Henry, whose transformation from rapid winger to deadly centre-forward was complete.
“We’re definitely better than two years ago,” Zidane said before the tournament. “Everyone is two years older and has more experience, and we play in the best European divisions. We now have five attackers with immense quality, which we lacked at the World Cup.
“As for me, at 28 I’ve matured and reached the summit of my art.”
The draw for the group stage might have concerned many with a vested interest in France’s hopes of pairing the Jules Rimet and Henri Delaunay trophies, with Les Bleus pitted against Denmark, Czech Republic and the co-hosts Netherlands. But for a player who thrived in high-stakes games, it set the table perfectly.
“We actually tried to lock him in the locker room so he couldn’t play,” former Denmark full-back Soren Colding jokes of his sides plans to cope with Zidane in their group-stage opener.
The Danes started brightly, with Jon Dahl Tomasson and Ebbe Sand both wasting good opportunities. Then France – and Zidane – took over.
“When you got close to him and if you were lucky enough to get the ball, then it was a free-kick,” ex-Tottenham midfielder Allan Nielsen remembers of his frustration at Zidane’s immaculate close control. “It was nearly impossible. He was so good at protecting the ball, turning, twisting and releasing the ball at the right time.”
“He was impossible to get the ball
off,” adds Morten Bisgaard, another of Denmark’s midfielders that day. “You knew you just had to cover the areas the best you can, to get support from other players and keep the space tight, be compact and hope that he doesn’t do anything special in the game. He was a fantastic player at that point. He had a good game. He was unstoppable.”
France won 3-0. Zidane laid on the second goal for Thierry Henry, a lofted pass that released the striker near the halfway line to race clear and slide the ball past Peter Schmeichel. Curiously, it was the first of only two goals Zidane would ever assist for Henry.
Zidane then masterfully created a chance for Wiltord, plucking the ball from the sky and performing a stepover while simultaneously playing a pass into the forward’s path, only for Schmeichel to smother the resultant shot. France’s No.10 had a hand in the third goal too, his subtle body feint in the centre circle creating enough space for him to prod the ball into Henry, springing a move that ended in a simple finish for Wiltord.
“He was a world-class player,” reflects Nielsen. “At that time, at his peak, he was unbelievable. There was not much you could do.”
In France’s second game, Czech defender Petr Gabriel dealt a sledgehammer blow to his side’s chances when his poor back-pass was seized upon by Henry, who poked the ball past Pavel Srnicek for a seventh-minute lead. Nonchalantly pirouetting and passing his way through a 2-1 victory, Zidane helped seal France’s progress to the knockout stages with a game to spare and so was rested for the 3-2 defeat to Netherlands in the last group fixture.
If Zidane had impressed in the group games, he would awe in the knockouts.
In a tight encounter against a talented Spain side that many had tipped to finally end their long wait for international success, Zidane opened the scoring. His 25-yard free-kick found the top corner with such power and curl that goalkeeper Santiago Canizares’ dive was futile from the moment of launch. And while Spain wasted chances late on – not least Raul’s sky-bound penalty kick – France’s margin of victory could have been greater than their eventual 2-1 win had Patrick Vieira converted the chance Zidane conjured for him, or had Zidane himself not uncharacteristically miscued when Christophe Dugarry located him eight yards from goal in the first half.
Then came Zidane’s tour de force, his pièce de résistance; quite possibly the finest performance he ever produced.
“We knew France very well and we knew they were one of the favourites to win the Euros,” former Benfica striker Nuno Gomes remembers of the build-up to the semi-final between Portugal and France. “We prepared for the game with a lot of concentration and we watched some of the games that they had played before.
“Zidane was the most dangerous player and he was the one responsible for the offensive game, so we paid special attention to him. He was the player who imposed the pace of play for the French team. We knew that we had to try to stop him and not let him be comfortable with the ball.”
But Zidane’s level of comfort within the game was evident by just the ninth minute, when his casual back-flick rolled perfectly into the path of on-rushing left-back Bixente Lizarazu. He was in peak from, in flawless sync with his ten French colleagues. Later in the half, a neatly executed stepover took him away from Costinha. After a one-two with Henry on the edge of the box, he found Lilian Thuram in space out wide.
“We actually tried to lock him in the locker room so he couldn’t play”
Soren Colding, Denmark full-back
He finished the period with a rasping long-range shot that whistled inches over the top corner of Vitor Baia’s goal. France were 1-0 down at the break thanks to Gomes’ instinctive 20-yard snapshot, but Zidane was summoning his vast powers to conjure a comeback.
After Henry had equalised, Zidane almost broke the Portuguese resistance in the 71st minute. He controlled a high ball into the area on his chest and, in one movement, changed direction and whipped a left-footed cross that evaded Anelka’s dive by a hair.
Every time Zidane touched the ball, he attracted one, two, sometimes three opponents. His sheer gravity was drawing Portugal out of their shape and creating space for colleagues. Invariably, he’d swivel away from pressure and find a team-mate. On several such occasions, he’d then employ a quick give-and-go, getting the ball back ten yards closer to goal and repeating the trick.
Into extra-time, Zidane renewed Costinha’s torment. Much as the Danes had found, the Portuguese midfielders learned they could only halt Zidane by illegal means. A lung-busting run saw Zidane carry the ball from deep inside his own half, leaving three defenders in his wake as he bounded toward the Portuguese penalty area – they couldn’t get close enough even to foul him. Such a display of grace, power and stamina would have provided a fitting finale to a game Zidane had illuminated, but his final pass was blocked.
Then, in the 117th minute, his moment arrived.
Austrian referee Gunter Benko awarded France a penalty after Portugal full-back Abel Xavier blocked Wiltord’s goal-bound shot with his arm. Staving off the exhaustion of nearly two hours’ creative toil, Zidane steadied himself for his first-ever international spot kick. He rifled the ball beyond Vitor Baia and into the top-left corner. With the Golden Goal rule in effect, the game was over. Zidane had crowned his faultless display by firing France into the final. “He’s playing football from another planet,” said Thuram after the game.
“It was very tough, very intense,” remembers Robert Pires, who came on as a second-half substitute against Portugal. “There was a lot of stress because it was just one step from the final. But it was the best game Zizou played. He was like a genius, like a maestro. He took a lot of responsibility. For the other players like me, it was easy to follow him in this game.”
“He changed the game,” Nuno Gomes reflects, 21 years on. “There was a move where he took the ball almost from one area to the other. And, of course, the way he scored the penalty.
“He’s for sure among one of the best players I faced. And for me, he’s one of the best players in the world. Some of the times I played against him I found myself amazed by his pure class.”
Against a strong Italy side in the final four days later, a 93rd-minute Wiltord strike was required to again force extra-time, before Trezeguet’s thudding left-footed finish from a Pires cutback gifted France another Golden Goal victory and the trophy. Compared to
his semi-final performance, Zidane was more subdued, yet still the presentable chances he created for Thuram, Wiltord and Henry could have made for a more comfortable evening’s work for France had they not been squandered.
Zidane, predictably, was named Player of the Tournament. Later that year, he collected his second FIFA World Player of the Year award, and the following summer joined Real Madrid from Juventus for a worldrecord fee. He had, indeed, reached the summit of his art.
“When we didn’t know what to do with the ball,” said Lizarazu of Zidane at Euro 2000, “we gave it to him.”
In 2004, ever unimpressed by his own magnificence, Zidane lamented the fact that his international career had lacked a dominant performance at a major tournament. He hadn’t stamped his mark on a World Cup the way Pele had in 1970 or Maradona in 1986
- so he felt - nor at the Euros like Michel Platini in 1984 or Marco van Basten four years later.
Yet anyone who witnessed his performances in Netherlands and Belgium during that summer would disagree – from the global TV audiences, to the fans in the stands, to those who stood alongside him.
“Zidane dazzled the European Championship with his quality,” said team-mate Emmanuel Petit.
“On the field, he was amazing,” concludes Pires. “When we talk in France about this tournament, all the people say Zizou was the best player.
“Deschamps was the captain, but Zizou was the leader with his technique. He was the player.”
“When we didn’t know what to do with the ball, we gave it to him” Bixente Lizarazu, France left-back