Zinedine Zidane Is Now France's Head Coach — Here's Everything That Got Him Here

By CreativeQuizzes Editorial Team

The job he turned down everything else for

Zinedine Zidane was officially appointed head coach of the France national team on July 28, 2026, succeeding Didier Deschamps after the team's fourth-place finish at that summer's World Cup. It's a four-year deal running through the 2030 World Cup, and by Zidane's own account, it's the only job he was actually waiting for.

"In the last four or five years, I had offers to join a club and I refused them all for the France national team," Zidane said at his unveiling. "I've always seen the France national team in the view of a fan — but also as a future manager. That's the reason why I didn't take on a new club team." He'd been out of work since leaving Real Madrid in 2021, turning down a steady stream of lucrative club and national-team offers in the years since, all while the France job sat, by most accounts, as the one thing he actually wanted.

The two bullet headers that made him a legend

To understand why this appointment carries the weight it does in France, you have to go back to July 12, 1998, when Zidane scored twice in the World Cup final against Brazil at the Stade de France — both headers, both from corners, both genuinely unlikely sources of goals from a player known more for his touch and vision than his aerial ability. France won 3-0, claiming the country's first-ever World Cup title, and Zidane became the face of a result that's still treated as a defining moment in modern French sporting history.

He went on to captain France at the 2006 World Cup, delivering one of the more extraordinary individual tournament runs of his career — including a Panenka penalty in the final against Italy — before his international career ended infamously with a red card for headbutting Marco Materazzi in that same final. It's a strange, fitting encapsulation of Zidane as a player: capable of moments of pure genius and moments of raw temper within the same match, sometimes within minutes of each other.

A playing career most managers could only dream of replicating

Beyond the international stage, Zidane's club career put him among the best midfielders of his generation. He won Serie A titles with Juventus, then moved to Real Madrid in 2001 for what was, at the time, a world-record transfer fee, where he scored one of the most replayed goals in Champions League final history — a left-footed volley against Bayer Leverkusen in 2002 that's still shown as a highlight-reel staple more than two decades later.

He won the Ballon d'Or in 1998 and was named FIFA World Player of the Year three times. By the time he retired as a player in 2006, after that World Cup final sendoff against Italy, he'd already built the kind of resume that made whatever came next in his career something people were going to watch closely.

The manager who won three straight Champions Leagues

What came next turned out to be just as remarkable. Zidane began coaching in 2014 as an assistant to Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid, helping the club win the Champions League that season, before taking over Real Madrid's Castilla reserve side and eventually being promoted to first-team manager in 2016.

What followed was one of the most statistically dominant managerial stretches in modern football: three consecutive Champions League titles from 2016 to 2018, a feat no manager had achieved before in the competition's modern format. He left Real Madrid in 2018, returned for a second stint in 2019, and departed again in 2021 — all while compiling a win percentage and trophy count that made him an obvious candidate for any top job in the sport, which is exactly why his decision to wait five years specifically for the France role stood out as unusual.

Joining an exclusive club of 1998 teammates

Zidane becomes the 17th head coach of Les Bleus, and the third member of France's 1998 World Cup-winning squad to take the job in succession — following Laurent Blanc (2010-2012) and Deschamps himself (2012-2026). That continuity is clearly intentional on the federation's part, and Zidane leaned into it directly at his unveiling: "Deschamps is Deschamps, Blanc is Blanc, Zidane is Zidane. I guarantee continuity so that the French national team keeps winning."

He's also chasing something no member of that 1998 squad has achieved yet: joining the small group of people who have won the World Cup as both a player and a head coach, a club that currently includes his former teammate and immediate predecessor, Deschamps, among a handful of others in the sport's history.

What he inherits, and what's next

Zidane takes over a France squad built around genuine attacking talent — Kylian Mbappe, Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembele, and Desire Doue among them — giving him a roster most incoming national-team coaches would consider enviable. His first assignment is this autumn's UEFA Nations League matches, before France begins qualifying for Euro 2028 next year, with the job running through the 2030 World Cup on his current contract.

For a federation that's leaned on continuity from its 1998 generation for over a decade and a half, handing the job to arguably the most decorated member of that squad — as both a player and a coach — is as close to a sure bet as international football appointments get. Whether Zidane can translate his Real Madrid success onto the international stage, where he'll have far less day-to-day control over his players than he did at club level, is the question his tenure now has four years to answer.