The cameras that always got the first shot are staying outside
Zinedine Zidane names his first France squad on Friday at 18:00. Everyone is waiting on the list. What he has quietly changed at Clairefontaine may say more.
RMC Sport report that the new staff have closed the players’ arrival to the media. No cameras on the walk-in, no footage to pore over, no annual debate about what this or that international turned up wearing. The ritual is simply gone from the schedule.
Didier Deschamps had made that moment part of the furniture. Zidane has removed it before coaching a single session.
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Weeks of groundwork behind a decision that looks abrupt
Nothing here was improvised. Zidane assembled his backroom team after his appointment, adjusted it, then worked through a run of meetings between Paris and Madrid, where he still lives.
His assistants have been in the stands. Watching as many players as they could get to before the deadline, which is not glamorous work but it is the work.
Several staff members have already moved into Clairefontaine ahead of everyone else. The brief given to them is narrow: have the place ready for the players and change as little as possible around them. Zidane wants the opening days of his first camp under his own control, and the squad out of view while they settle.
“For now”, and why that phrase matters
A coach who cuts a media ritual at his first camp is choosing the terms of his own communication. He is also putting a wall between the dressing room and the first round of judgements, which arrive whether or not anyone has played a match.
RMC Sport note that Zidane wants the arrivals closed “for now”. Nothing in that suggests a permanent policy, and a couple of results either way tend to settle these things faster than any stated intention.
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