Zidane Reunites with Barthez in New France Era
Fabien Barthez is back with France – and back alongside Zinedine Zidane.
The French Football Federation (FFF) confirmed on Thursday that the 1998 World Cup-winning goalkeeper will join Zidane’s new backroom staff, taking charge of the national team’s goalkeepers as Les Bleus turn the page on the Didier Deschamps era.
Barthez, now 55, shared the pitch – and the trophy – with Zidane when France lifted the World Cup on home soil in 1998. Two decades and more have passed, but the connection clearly still matters. Zidane, appointed France head coach on July 28, has wasted no time surrounding himself with familiar faces he trusts.
Barthez’s remit is clear: oversee and develop the goalkeeping department for the senior national side. It marks a return to a role he knows well. The former Toulouse, Monaco, Marseille and Manchester United keeper previously served as a consultant with France under Raymond Domenech and Laurent Blanc, before disappearing from the national-team setup during Deschamps’ 14-year reign.
He has not been entirely absent from the touchline. Barthez briefly worked on the Toulouse coaching staff between 2020 and 2021, adding club experience to his already weighty international pedigree.
Zidane’s staff, though, will not be built on nostalgia alone.
The FFF also confirmed a series of other appointments, with a strong Real Madrid flavour running through the announcements. David Bettoni and Hamidou Msaidie come in as assistant coaches, both long-time lieutenants of Zidane during his two spells in charge at Madrid. They know his methods, his demands, and the standards he expects.
Gregory Dupont joins as “Strategy and Performance Advisor”, another figure who has already worked closely with Zidane in the Spanish capital. His role will be to fine-tune the physical and performance framework around the squad, a key component of Zidane’s success at club level.
All of this is building towards September.
Zidane, 54, will lead his first France training camp then, stepping onto the Clairefontaine pitches not as the elegant playmaker or talismanic leader of old, but as the man in charge of reshaping a team still smarting from a World Cup semi-final exit.
The first real test comes quickly. France open the Zidane era with a Nations League trip to Turkey on September 25. New staff, new structure, old legends reunited on the bench.
The question now is simple: can this golden generation of coaches spark another golden chapter on the pitch?
