Although considered a talented player even since he was a youngster, no one thought of Zinedine Zidane as a serious contender to Michel Platini's position as the best player in France's history. Platini, who lead France in two World Cup semi-finals in 1982 and 1986 and won the European Championship in 1984, France's first trophy until recently.
However, the World was up for a surprise, as Zinedine Zidane had an outburst of skill and managed to place a serious mark wherever he played, as well as leading France to winning their first World Cup in 1998, their second European Championship in 2000 and lead France to a new World Cup final recently, as they lost against Italy in 2006, a final marked by the famous "Zinedine Zidane headbutt" incident, that you probably saw on TV over and over again (but we'll talk about that in a bit).
Zinedine Zidane – France Career
Zinedine Zidane started playing soccer professionally in 1988, for a rather mediocre France team, namely Cannes. His 4 years spent at Cannes, saw him going from sporadic appearances to earning a first squad place at only 18 years of age.
His first goal scored for the team occurred on February 8th, 1991. Besides the joy of having scored for his team in the first French league, Zidane won a Renault Clio for that goal, as Cannes' club owner promised him a car when he will shake the opponent's goal for the first time.
Although Zinadine Zidane was still not at his top potential at Cannes, French giants Girondine Bordeaux spotted him as a future talent and signed him.
Zizu, or Zizou as he would soon be nicknamed by fans around the world, spent 4 years at Bordeaux, where he learnt what winning trophies and playing at the highest level meant. He won the Intertoto Cup with Bordeaux in 1995, then earned the silver medal in the UEFA Cup in 1995/96.
Unlike many players that simply boomed from being nobody to huge stars, Zinedine Zidane worked hard to earn his success and the steps of his career slowly, but constantly rose. The next step, would be the most important one, as he joined Juventus Torino, a team that there aren't many locations you can move to that are "higher" from a professional soccer player's point of view.
At Torino, Zizu found a performance-hungry environment and joined a star-studded, including France colleague Didier Deschamps, or world class superstars Alessandro Del Piero and Edgar Davids. Although winning two Serie A titles with Juventus, Zidane also suffered a major disappointment on the Champions League front, as his team lost two consecutive finals, in 1997 and 1998, the latter against what will soon become his home, namely Real Madrid.
Ending his career after 5 years spent with the Real Madrid "Galacticos", Zidane already had a long career behind him, marked by decisive goals, assists, brilliant technique and the love of his fans, who already swiped away the title of "Best French Player of All Time" from Platini and gave it to Zizu.
Zinedine Zidane – Decisiveness
Amongst his other qualities, such as great vision, strength or technique, Zidane had something that all great players share, namely decisiveness to change an important match result. This showed in the 2001-2002 Champions League Final, when he scored a superb winning goal against Bayer Leverkusen, volleying the ball right into the top left corner of the goal.
In the 1998 final, Zizou managed a sensational "double" against Brazil, basically winning France its first World Cup almost all by himself.
He also proved the same decisiveness in his last World Cup, in 2006, where he lead France to the final, however 5 minutes before the end of the match, he lost his nerves and did the famous "Zidane headbutt".
Striking down Italy's Marco Matterazzi with his head, in his final match as a professional player, brought him a contradictory set of feelings from the fans, some being extremely disappointed, others thinking he was rightful to do so and attributed that Zidane's headbutt was his way of leaving football as a warrior, not a loser.
