Do we like Zinedine Zidane?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A good record and years of UN charity work, held back by his Qatar World Cup bid role and a shrug at the rights criticism.
Zidane was born in 1972 in La Castellane, a tough part of Marseille, to Algerian immigrant parents. He learned the game on the streets there, was spotted at 14, and spent three years in the AS Cannes youth system. He debuted for Cannes at 17 and scored in his first match.
The rest is football folklore. He scored twice in France's 3-0 win over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final, helped win Euro 2000, and joined Real Madrid in 2001 for a then-record fee. As a manager he later won three straight Champions Leagues with Real.
Then came the headbutt. In the 2006 World Cup final he headbutted Marco Materazzi in the chest after words were exchanged, was sent off, and France lost on penalties. Zidane said Materazzi insulted his mother and sister, while Materazzi denied mentioning his mother. Zidane apologised especially to children, saying “My act is not forgivable”, but said he didn't regret what happened. FIFA banned him for three games and fined him 7,500 Swiss francs, and he agreed to three days of community service with children.
On the harm check, nothing turned up from Zidane himself against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. The mark is Qatar: he was an ambassador for its successful World Cup bid and, in 2022, told people to “forget the controversies and focus on the football”. He said criticism would never be enough, which is the line critics would pick at given Qatar's record on migrant workers. Where you land depends on whether you read that as dodging or as a footballer not wanting to be a politician.
The recent news is a homecoming. Zidane said the France job was the only one he wanted after Real Madrid, and he takes over after a World Cup semi-final loss to Spain and a 6-4 loss to England in the third-place play-off. French writer Thibaud Leplat then said on Spanish radio that Zidane is bigger than the federation, and later clarified he meant cultural and symbolic weight. It's a fan-talk row, not a scandal.
The good stuff is real and long-running. Zidane has been a UN goodwill ambassador since 2001 and captains the annual Match Against Poverty with Ronaldo. The 2011 edition raised money mostly for people hit by the Horn of Africa food crisis, and he called it part of the global fight against poverty.