Zinedine Zidane Returns as France National Team Coach
Zinedine Zidane is back where France always seemed to be saving a place for him.
The French Football Federation confirmed on Tuesday that the former midfield great will take over as head coach of the national team, stepping into the role vacated by Didier Deschamps just two weeks after France’s fourth-place finish at the World Cup.
Deschamps’ reign ended in chaos on the pitch, a wild 6-4 defeat to England in his final match, but his legacy is anything but chaotic. Fourteen years in charge. One World Cup title in 2018. A Nations League crown in 2020-21. Runs to the Euro 2016 final and the 2022 World Cup final. Across 185 matches, he delivered 120 victories and turned France into a permanent fixture at the sharp end of major tournaments.
Now the keys pass to a man who once dictated games rather than touchlines.
Zidane, 54, returns to the international stage not as the elegant conductor of midfield but as the architect of a new era. His first assignment is already marked on the calendar: an away UEFA Nations League match against Turkiye, before France welcome Italy to the Stade de France on October 2. Two fixtures, two stern examinations, and almost certainly two early verdicts on how quickly he can stamp his authority on a team used to winning.
This is not a clean break with the past so much as a handover between two pillars of the same golden age. Deschamps and Zidane shared the dressing room and the podium in 1998, lifting the World Cup together on home soil. Deschamps wore the armband; Zidane wore the crown, his pivotal role in that triumph sealed by the Ballon d’Or he claimed that same year.
From captain to coach, Deschamps extended that legacy across a generation. Zidane now inherits it, carrying the weight of memory and expectation in equal measure. France are not a team in need of rescue. They are a team expected to keep winning.
The question is simple, and unforgiving: can the man who once defined French brilliance on the pitch now redefine it from the bench?
