Zinedine Zidane - 3 time CL winning manager without a job
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I could be wrong but I think most people know that, they simply can't accept the idea that someone doesn't see United as the biggest thing around, a club that you would do everything to join. To me it feels like it has more to do with pride than sense.
It's a job. If he gets a good deal, he'll say yes. The only thing that can stop him from joining us I can think of is the French NT. I can see him managing them after Qatar.
Its different for Conte as his family were keen to come back to London as they wanted their teenage daughter to go to one of the really good elite schools to carry on her education.
Zidane's missus is against the move to the UK and Manchester. That doesnt have to stop it happening. Guardiola's family live in Barcelona (they left after manchester bombing). Pellegrini family have always remained in Chile.
However Zidane doesnt seem the type to do that to me. So I think he will wait for PSG or France job. He has a stellar CV as a manager and unless he wins PL and CL with Utd it would be tainted. Whereas winning WC with france would pretty much be the icing on a fantastic career as a player and manager.
I still don't understand why people keep mentioning PSG. It's like suggesting that a Madrid fan is waiting for the Barcelona job.
I don't think many nor me included understand anything about the supposed PSG rivalry. Location is very far away, historically I don't see any reason for a strong rivalry unlike Barca Madrid. Feels like trying to imagine some fierce rivalry between City and Arsenal.
You don't have to try to understand they are rivals. In France we have two things, regionalism and a province vs Paris logic, Marseille lead the way as it's the second largest city after Paris. So people locally care about these things.
Zidane is a manager and in terms of a career as a manager you don't get many teams with the appeal of United (despite the whole living in Manchester thing). In fact I could argue that the only team that is clearly bigger than United he's already managed and resigned from last season.
Woodward just probably doesn't want to give Zidane control over transfers and recruitment. They're probably trying to force Carrick and Mckenna on him as well.
Woodward just probably doesn't want to give Zidane control over transfers and recruitment. They're probably trying to force Carrick and Mckenna on him as well.
Fat Sam wouldn't have that never mind Zidane.
Looking from the outside PSG don't seem to be worth caring for historically, I grew up with Marseille being the top team, PSG is largely nothing and interestingly Paris the capital of 10 million naturally didn't generate a strong football identity unlike many cities around Europe. If this rivalry is more modern off the back of PSG's lottery win, again it's more fabricated and recent. I get that Paris would be a great investment in modern times if you can get the people there to care more and it seems to be working now with a lot of effort and money. It's no hotbed of football historically.
We have the province and regionalism here, most don't like London. London though despite not winning a European Cup until recently do have a very strong footballing Identity but even with that and being a despised capital for centuries there's no deep rivalry like United and Liverpool. Caring about PSG seems odd, comparing it to Barca Madrid seems bizarre.
I don't think that it is that simple, he could easily be in the same mindset than Cruijff. At the end of the day, we should keep in mind that he has never been desperate to be a manager, he wanted to be a club executive and could easily entertain the idea of going back to it.
Having family in both Marseille and Paris, from my experience I would say that despite the distance geographically the people (in Marseille especially) view people in Paris more as we Mancunians view Scousers than we do Londoners. Recent success of PSG and how they've succeeded has only added to that.
True, he could be. However, if he is still interested in management I don't see how we don't have a chance at hiring him. Personally, I don't think we've actually even approached him but can definitely see that if he was willing to come here he'd have reservations about our board, structure and coaching staff.
The rivalry is old, it's not new and has nothing to do with QSI. And I'm giving you the context from France, also Iles de France has a strong football identity, if anything that's the region where football is king, it's the number one football area in France. The crazy thing is that everything in your post is wrong, I can understand it because you are a looking at it from the outside but you couldn't be more wrong. There is two large cities were football is king Paris and Marseille, the other cities are divided between a multitude of sports.
I don't think he actually wants the job tbh...managing a football club seems sooo stressful these days, a few defeats and the fans want you gone.
I watched this.
It has the one thing that I like more than a style of football- a manager who makes his team play under different formations. Zidanes 433, 4231, 352 and 442, gives me hope that he can analyse the situation and make changes when required.
Yes I get it but it is odd how a so called strong region of football was like before the big investment. A city like Paris in comparison to London or other big European city should've generated something bigger no? You might feel it is one of the big regions of football there and that might be true in some context of living in France but from the outside it doesn't come across that way I'm sorry. It's your rivalry though so it's your truth, I can accept that.
I guess that we have a chance but I don't think that every manager take a job based on how big the club is or how much money they get. Some will put an emphasis on where the club is, what they can or how they can do it.
So I'm sure this has been discussed but it appears Zidane doesn't speak English . That is a huge barrier isn't it? I mean we have 3 Frenchmen but that is not a whole squad.
I naively thought that almost every French person spoke a little English, I don't think I've ever dealt with a French person professionally that hasn't been able to speak broken English and to a decent level as well.
Tad surprised he doesn't speak a word of the queens, not that he's obliged to of course. Edit; around 60% of the population speak English to a reasonable level. But he's never needed to so why would he I suppose.
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You don't to be sorry and It doesn't really matter how it comes across, Paris is the largest football region in France by some distance, that's the hotbed of grassroot french football, that's where the best amateur clubs are and football is the major sport there even more than in other regions. Just two examples that are telling is about where players are developed in France:
https://runrepeat.com/most-football-talent-france
https://www.espn.com/soccer/blog/es...ball-paul-pogba-kylian-mbappe-anthony-martial
Now I assume that you have that impression because you counted the amount of big clubs in Paris and only saw one, that's due to how french football has mainly worked economically, patronage has been the rule and those patrons generally choose a club that is linked to their family or business, for example the ASSE were at Saint-Etienne because the company that initially funded them is Casino which has its headquarters in Saint-Etienne.
I'm willing to bet that he does speak a bit of english, he was in a sport management school and english is mandatory.
Yeah I would bet he does speak a bit. I feel like I have even seen interviews with him in English, it's weird, going to have to do a google for some now.
Edit: Check this video, he says one sentence in English to Becks at the very end!
Speaks 5 languages and English is the weakest of the 5 it seems.
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It's not that old. It was complicately fabricated during the Tapie and C+ years, and isn't exactly organic. It's quite deeply rooted now, so it doesn't really matter, but it's not quite the Real/Barça, or Utd/Liverpool rivalries that have true historical, social and/or cultural origins.
It doesn't matter in the context of Zidane cos he'll have grown up with that rivalry, at its fiercest (way before QSI), so it's completely unlikely he'll ever manage PSG, but I think it's interesting to properly contextualise the rivalry. The true organic rivalry in France would be St Etienne and Lyon, much moreso than PSG and OM.
Also @redshaw you mentioned distances, but Madrid and Barcelona aren't particularly close geographically.
I just don't think he's bothered about the PL and living in the UK. If he was open to it, I think he'd be in by now on a short term deal but once you have lived in Madrid for so long, moving to Manchester is hardly going to be top of your list, no matter how big the club is. Add in his wife apparently not being keen and I think his kids all play for Real? Maybe as interim but I can't see it.
30+ years is old and the Paris/Marseille rivalry isn't simply a football thing, it's completley wrong to claim that it's not historical, there is an historical and social antagonism where the city of Marseille represented the province. Marseille is also historical seen as popular city while Paris represent the french bourgeoisie.
Now the rivalry between OM and PSG is a different story, it is indeed due to Tapie vs Canal, similar to Tapie vs Bez. But it doesn't change the fact that he used a context that preexisted which is Paris vs Marseille, Paris vs Province.
Pretty sure there have been plenty of examples of managers succeeding in English football without tonnes of English ability
Poch (early on) and Bielsa spring to mind. Ranieri in his Chelsea stint and maybe also Conte from memory?
Sarri can speak some English but has a difficult time understanding it, so he had an interpreter for interviews to tell him what was being asked.
You really think this is the MO of a multimillionaire manager who has already won everything there is to win, has shown he is willing to walk away from a job that doesn't suit him and has never shown much affinity for English football?
Yeah, I'm not saying that's not the case. Nevertheless, the footballing rivalry, the French "Le clasico", is a complete marketing fabrication that built upon a very tenuous rivalry between Paris and Marseille (you're exaggerating the capital vs province thing, it's gotten bigger these past 20 years with growing economical disparities but wasn't quite as strong as suggested by the rivalry when it was created). It's nothing like the other rivalries in world football. This is also due to the fact that football is less embedded culturally in France than in England, Spain, or say Brazil.
And yeah, 30 years in football rivalry, a fabricated one at that, is relatively short in my mind.
No, I'm from that part of the country it is actually the opposite, the capital vs province is diminishing. It used to be a lot more obvious when older folks were still speaking in patois which was still a thing in the 90s and is almost inexistant today. I'm pretty sure that the kids aren't familiar with it today and regional rivalries will be reduced.
Fair enough but Frank Lebouef certainly does know Zidane pretty well and is of the opinion that Zidane is not interested in being a career manager going from club to club. With what he achieved at Madrid he does not have anything to prove and no real desire to return to the grind of club management when he appears to value his time and his family life so highly. The French job appeals because it is a new challenge and obviously has far fewer demands on his time than club management. He could of course be tempted in the future by Juve due to his close connections to the club but it is just as likely that he is effectively retired from club management at this point as he has been there, seen it and done it.
Nah, strongly disagree, and you're really exaggerating what it was at the time. Had there been an actual strong opposition between Paris and the province back then, the OM/PSG rivalry would have seemed less fabricated - however, it's pretty well accepted that it was a total Tapie/C+ fabrication to raise the profile of the league back then.
And yes, the opposition between Paris and the province is getting much bigger nowadays, with the disparities in class increasing, and Parisians in their 30s moving to cities like Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille, leading to strong gentrification. It's mostly felt with Marseille, as it's a very recent move from Parisians to go live there, and big parts of the city have massively changed.
I don't really care honestly, if you want to pretend that there was historically a strong rivalry between Paris and the Province, akin to the economical conflict between Manchester and Liverpool, or the cultural opposition between Catalunya and Madrid, because of the use of patois... good for you. The reality is that it's just a very fake rivalry that was created, and that the opposition between the capital and the rest of the country was never really a big thing.
The stuff about his wife not wanting to move has been known for a while, it is also one of the major reasons why he fancies the France job so much as he wouldn't have to go live in France since French NT managers are only required to be at Clairefontaine during international breaks.
Regarding the first paragraph the two things aren't mutually exclusive, there can be a strong opposition between cities and also think that the OM/PSG rivalry(le classico) was a promotion tool by Tapie. It doesn't mean that unlike what you waid there is no historic opposition between Paris and the province, in fact it's quite amazing that you deny that opposition when talking about this part of France which had linguistic issues with Paris(governments), that applies to Provence, Languedoc- Roussillon, Catalogne, Pays Basque and Haute Garonnes. These issues have diminished not increased.
As for the second paragraph, I would say that you are wrong again. It's not Paris that is the target but the political class. Again I'm from one of the cities that has been the most affected by gentrification and Parisians aren't the target of criticisms, it's mainly local politicians and the government but the city of Paris isn't really a target.
And finally, calm down. I'm pretty sure that I agreed on your point about the rivalry between clubs being fabricated, we disagree on 30 years being old or not but that's not an issue and neither of us argued it. There is no need to lose your cool.
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What's the relevance of that random selfie of him and some lady(?)She used to be his brother.
Yeah I would bet he does speak a bit. I feel like I have even seen interviews with him in English, it's weird, going to have to do a google for some now.
Edit: Check this video, he says one sentence in English to Becks at the very end!
I've thought for a long time that it's probably an advantage not to speak good english if you want to manage in the PL. Mourinho's english was much better, in his early chelsea days, than the broken, nonsensical crap he'd come out with for the press.
Leaving people with doubt as to what you meant can be very useful, given the scrutiny at the big clubs. Sir Alex did this very well too.
He looks like a smug Tory commentator dressed like that.