Although
considered a talented player even since he was a youngster, no one
thought of Zinedine Zidane as a serious contender to Michel Platini's
position as the best player in France's history. Platini, who lead
France in two World Cup semi-finals in 1982 and 1986 and won the
European Championship in 1984, France's first trophy until recently.
However, the World was up for a surprise, as Zinedine Zidane had an
outburst of skill and managed to place a serious mark wherever he
played, as well as leading France to winning their first World Cup in
1998, their second European Championship in 2000 and lead France to a
new World Cup final recently, as they lost against Italy in 2006, a
final marked by the famous "Zinedine Zidane headbutt"
incident, that you probably saw on TV over and over again (but we'll
talk about that in a bit).
Zinedine Zidane
– France Career Zinedine Zidane started playing soccer
professionally in 1988, for a rather mediocre France team, namely
Cannes. His 4 years spent at Cannes, saw him going from sporadic
appearances to earning a first squad place at only 18 years of age.
His first goal
scored for the team occurred on February 8th, 1991. Besides the joy of
having scored for his team in the first French league, Zidane won a
Renault Clio for that goal, as Cannes' club owner promised him a car
when he will shake the opponent's goal for the first time.
Although Zinadine Zidane was
still not at his top potential at Cannes, French giants Girondine
Bordeaux spotted him as a future talent and signed him.
Zizu, or Zizou as he would
soon be nicknamed by fans around the world, spent 4 years at Bordeaux,
where he learnt what winning trophies and playing at the highest
level meant. He won the Intertoto Cup with Bordeaux in 1995,
then earned the silver medal in the UEFA Cup in 1995/96.
Unlike many players that
simply boomed from being nobody to huge stars, Zinedine Zidane worked
hard to earn his success and the steps of his career slowly, but
constantly rose. The next step, would be the most important one, as he
joined Juventus Torino, a team that there aren't many locations you can
move to that are "higher" from a professional soccer player's point of
view.
At Torino, Zizu found a
performance-hungry environment and joined a star-studded, including
France colleague Didier Deschamps, or world class superstars
Alessandro Del Piero and Edgar Davids. Although winning two Serie A
titles with Juventus, Zidane also suffered a major disappointment on
the Champions League front, as his team lost two consecutive finals, in
1997 and 1998, the latter against what will soon become his home,
namely Real Madrid.
Ending his career after 5
years spent with the Real Madrid "Galacticos",
Zidane already had a long career behind him, marked by decisive goals,
assists, brilliant technique and the love of his fans, who already
swiped away the title of "Best French Player of All Time" from Platini
and gave it to Zizu.
Zinedine
Zidane
– Decisiveness Amongst his other qualities, such as great
vision, strength or technique, Zidane had something that all great
players share, namely decisiveness to change an important match result.
This showed in the 2001-2002 Champions League Final, when he scored a
superb
winning goal against Bayer Leverkusen, volleying the ball
right into the top left corner of the goal.
In the 1998 final, Zizou
managed a sensational "double" against Brazil, basically winning France
its first World Cup almost all by himself.
He also proved the same
decisiveness in his last World Cup, in 2006, where he lead France to
the final, however 5 minutes before the end of the match, he lost his
nerves and did the famous "Zidane headbutt".
Striking down Italy's Marco
Matterazzi with his head, in his final match as a professional player,
brought him a contradictory set of feelings from the fans, some being
extremely disappointed, others thinking he was rightful to do so and
attributed that Zidane's headbutt was his way of leaving football as a
warrior, not a loser.
