A first taste of the waiting game
Zinédine Zidane has just lived something new. For a little over a month, France’s head coach had no players to coach. After a first camp that produced three wins and a draw, he handed his squad back to their clubs and went home to Madrid, according to RMC Sport.
He had said more than once that letting the group leave after two weeks of work was frustrating. The gap between windows gave him no choice. So he watched. “I mostly watched them,” Zidane explained, and the count backs him up: he followed every player he could call up, in league play and in European competition, and went back over individual sequences to check details.
His staff carried part of the load. Assistant David Bettoni, scout Stéphane Plancque and video analyst Farid Tabet fed the process, with Fabien Barthez covering the goalkeepers. They held weekly calls, sometimes more often. The only time Zidane was spotted in a stadium was the Trophée des Champions in Lens at the start of the season.
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Good football, not enough goals
The data pass gave him a clear verdict. He liked how his team moved the ball, and he did not like what came of it. France had 68 percent of possession and completed 92 percent of their passes in that first camp, yet Zidane was not satisfied once he set those numbers against the chances created. He said the attack has to do better with the players available, while adding that he is not worried.
It was not all screens and spreadsheets. Zidane made several trips to the federation headquarters in Paris for working meetings ahead of the matches against Italy and Turkey. He also played padel, sometimes with Bettoni, turned up at a charity match in Bayonne for Pascal Olmeta’s association and appeared at the Paris motor show as an Alpine ambassador.
What is at stake next
The next camp is short and heavy. These are the last two Nations League games of the group phase, and France need both results to book a place in the quarter-finals. After five weeks of watching from a distance, Zidane finally gets his players back.
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