Florentino Pérez, having already confirmed Rafa Benitez’s job security just three weeks earlier, following the 4-0 thrashing by Barça, went on the El Larguero [‘Crossbar’] show on Spanish Radio.

He said, and I quote:

“Benítez is not going to be replaced by Zidane. The media have decided this is happening but it’s Real Madrid who name the coaches so Benitez will not be sacked and replaced by Zidane. He came to resolve our troubles -Rafa is the solution, not the problem.”

That was precisely eighteen days ago.

Since when Real Madrid have played three, won two, drawn one [at Valencia where they lost last year] and scored 15 goals. Sacking form?? Only on Planet Florentino

Back on December 17 the Madrid President added:

“We chose Benítez from a large number of candidates because he’s the right man to sort this squad’s specific problems.

“From last January until the summer we were in free-fall – he was the cure. “If we choose him as the right guy there’s no way we can say after three months that he’s got to go! “We have to give him time”.

‘No way’ right?

Rafa should have been packing his bags there and then. White club speak with forked tongue. And this is a mess of Los Blancos’ own making.

Sacking Carlo Ancelotti after a Champions League, a Copa del Rey, a World Club Cup a European Supercup and another Champions League semi final was an aberration. [Florentino to blame].

A point which both Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo made at the end of last season.

Once Ancelotti was sacked, appointing Zidane there and then [a job offer which the Frenchman stated he wouldn’t have turned down] would have been more strategic, fairer on Zizou and more intelligent. [Florentino to blame].

Appointing Rafa Benitez, his obvious talents aside, was like putting a fox in the hen-house. [Florentino to blame]

Everything he was good at, all his beliefs, every single career landmark which vouched for his talent flew directly against where this squad is right now.

Directly against what the fans were crying out for.

This Madrid squad needs management with finesse – it needs unifying, it needs fine-calibration and it needs sufficient commitment to the cause so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts rather than less than the sum as it is right now.

Benitez is the gruff, distant, ‘do it that way because I told you to!’ brand of manager who has won perhaps two, maybe three, outright fans in his main group of players. [Bale, Keylor and Nacho]

The vast majority of the rest of Madrid’s highly pampered players are either indifferent to him… or disbelievers.

The fans? They wanted verve, flair, daring, wins, goals, attacking play. And they wanted something to distract the world’s affection away from Barça

Albeit that Benitez’s Madrid are through to a very winnable last sixteen tie in the Champions League and sit only four points off the top of La Liga [decent positions for January of a first season] the cautious brand of football he proposed simply didn’t fit with the increasingly angry and voluble supporters.Will He Manage

Let’s See What You Can Do Zizou

So, Zidane takes over.

On the plus side his first clutch of fixtures are extremely winnable – a factor in Perez deciding to act now.

Before Madrid face Liga leaders Atlético in late February they play Deportivo [H], Sporting [H], Betis [A], Espanyol [H], Granada [A], Athletic [H] and Málaga [A].

Deportivo are excelling themselves, Athletic are much more formidable than for some seasons and care is needed away at hostile Andaluz football grounds.

But it’s not brutally unfair to suggest that Madrid could, perhaps should, win all those games and give Zizou a 21 point salute before the Madrid derby.

Zidane takes a 46% win rate from his work with Real Madrid’s ‘B’ team, Castilla, and is the youngest Madrid coach since Jorge Valdano twenty years ago. Nobody else would have been given the job based on those stats.

Valdano immediately pointed out: “Zidane is a risky appointment because of his lack of experience”.

That’s both fair and accurate.

But Zidane is also a buffer between the root of all that ails this club, Florentino Pérez, and the increasingly hostile Madrid fans.

Zizou is a legend, is the emblem of Madrid’s historic ninth European Cup win thanks to that dazzling goal at Hampden and he’s a football man of intelligence, calm, talent and elegance.

If it feels good to the rest of us to have Zizou back in the frontline – just imagine how it must feel to the fans and some of the players?

Florentino’s actions have been guided by him looking for an opiate for the masses – gifting them a club legend.

So that their angry gaze will divert from the President.

But, bear this in mind. When the Frenchman played his last game for Madrid it was against Villarreal in May 2006.

The game ended in a 3-3 draw which was a delight for the neutral to watch but a bitter disappointment to Madrid and their fans.

It was Zidane’s farewell to the Bernabéu but vast hordes of the Madridistas didn’t care.

They streamed out of the stadium in disgust at the scoreline. Most of the players simply trooped off, shoulders sagging.

I well remember David Beckham and Iker Casillas almost dragging the rest of the squad back to the centre of the pitch to help pay homage to Zidane as the more honourable fans who had stayed behind at least applauded this fabulous talent and bade him adios!

It was a dishonourable discharge, completely unfitting for such an iconic Madrid player – let down by supporters and team-mates alike after the final whistle.

And a warning to Zizou about how fickle this club can be, will be, if the results and performances aren’t something approaching perfection.

As for Florentino’s backing – with a friend like that, who needs enemies?

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The dream, not the reality.

Season ticket holders and media rumbling with discontent? Buy a Galactico.

Still not happy? Sack a manager.

Another scintilla of criticism? Then tell the great unwashed that the debt is negligible. Build a roof on the stadium. Offer loyal Madridistas free seats on the first charter flight to Pluto.

Or put a legend on the non-playing staff. Di Stefano, Butragueño, Valdano.

Anyone else available?

In the summer, the answer was, ‘yes’.

Therefore, as the Champions League resumed this week there was one participant, and only one, whose father herded goats, who has fallen towards earth at 200km per hour, who has suffered death threats, who’s been called “just a walking billboard who prostitutes himself” and who is as handy as pugilist as he is at football.

It’s not Lionel Messi but this man also once committed to his new club on the back of a serviette, he has played in three European Cup finals and two World Cup finals, scoring four times but only managing a win ratio of 40%.

He had a cinema movie made about his divine elegance, his family call him Yaz, you call him Zizou.

Or Zinedine Zidane. Legend.

Right now he is assistant coach to Carlo Ancelotti, the man who last week admitted: “Things are going to improve from now on because we really couldn’t play any worse.”

But Zidane’s time as a Bernabéu (track)suit has been just as full of uncomfortable wriggling as his first few months as a player here were.

The first Galactico

Zinedine Yazid Zidane was, you could argue, the first of Don Florentino’s Galacticos – the Emperor’s first set of new clothes.

Back in 2000 Luis Figo’s world record move shocked football, set a new transfer record and launched the ‘Galactico’ concept.

But his was a buyout — once Figo’s head had been turned by wages and the exact buyout clause paid Barcelona had absolutely no means of preventing him leaving.

Zidane was the jewel in Juve’s crown. Their team was in transition, the Bianconeri were totally opposed to selling but Florentino seduced the player. Zidane gave his current club a ‘let me go’ ultimatum and Pandora’s Box opened.

Perez began to get a kick from picking the pockets of Europe’s elite clubs, and from the evidence that the process was a kind of football valium for most of those whose philosophies opposed his.

The leaving of Juve (which commenced when Zidane was passed a knapkin at a Monte Carlo banquet on which was written: Wanna come out to play? Hugs n kisses, Florentino) is partly why this is a week of ghosts for the Frenchman.

Madrid initially struggled to get the best from him, to fine tune the team and Zidane into a functioning unit.

Then came Hampden. Then came THAT goal (above) and a ninth European Champion Clubs’ Cup win for Los Blancos. The proudest of boasts.

In that balletic, ballistic instant in Glasgow, Zidane indelibly branded himself as the single most identifiable Madrid image in their European Cup history.

Di Stefano, Gento, Puskas, Hierro, Raul, Roberto Carlos may MEAN more, much more, but the extraordinary goal and the global saturation of the Champions League elevate impact over importance.

But, as with much of Florentino’s reign, it proved to be a sugar-filled snack, not a rich banquet.

Infamy awaits at the World Cup

Zidane had arrived with a yearning for the Champions League to love him, having lost two finals and a semi-final in consecutive years with Juve (to Dortmund, Real Madrid and then Manchester United having led 3-1 at home with an away goal advantage).

After Hampden there was only frustration and humiliation. Madrid were twice knocked out of this tournament, at the semi and round of 16, by a rejuvenated Juventus under Marcello Lippi then Fabio Capello. He bet on red and the wheel came up black. He bet on black and the little while ball landed in a red slot.

There was THAT head-butt. Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy Zidane may have been entitled to moan.

However, the Marseille street-fighter in him erupting in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium wasn’t the last evidence that he has rebel, anarchist, blood flowing in his veins.

When footballers metamorphose from racehorses to plodding clydesdales, player to ex-player, they do so in a wide spectrum of ways.

Zidane goes back to his roots

Media pundit, manager, drinker tend to be the top three. Instead, in 2008 Zidane decided to take his former goat-herd father, whom he loves and respects with mad passion, back to Algeria so that the elder could help the younger discover and value his roots.

He became so committed to the cause of muscular dystrophy that, to raise profile and funds, he flung himself out of a plane. Perhaps if that year’s task had simply been walking on water the surprise might have been lesser.

“I always appreciated our earning power and the first class treatment we received but there was an equal and powerful desire to learn, to discover and to be able to see what normal people are able to use their inquisitiveness about life to achieve.

“But I agreed to fight against the causes and effects of muscular dystrophy. Each year this charity asks famous people to overcome some sort of challenge – my year it was sky-diving.”

Free from responsibility he strapped on a parachute, closed his eyes, prayed … and then jumped.

“I thought I would feel real fear but instead it was only apprehension and adrenalin. You are in the plane going higher and higher and you are concentrating on the instructions from someone who has jumped perhaps 8000 times. Yet in the back of your mind you know there is real danger.

“The moment comes, the door opens and instead of fear you just don’t have an instant to think… which is probably just as well.

“You freefall at 200 kilometres per hour for 50 seconds and during those moments you are truly alone with yourself – the adrenaline is magnificent!”

When Zidane was at Juve although he was paid a king’s ransom and forbidden to do so by contract he’d often need the challenge of street football.

Uncomfortable process back in Madrid

Marcello Lippi recalls: “Technically he is the best player I have ever trained. In training he used to do stuff that was 10 times more spectacular that anything he has ever done on the pitch. I used to watch him with amazement. I would go home at 10 o’clock at night and see him out in the streets of his own neighbourhood playing with his Algerian friends. I would stop and tell him that he shouldn’t be playing and he would reply that these were life-long friends and he couldn’t turn them down.”

Now, like then, his urge to be in contact with the ball is urgent.

That uncomfortable process of getting back into planet Real Madrid, which mirrors his initial months as a player, has included him experimenting with positions as Director of Football, Presidential advisor, scout, ambassador – and now assistant to Ancelotti (once his manager at Juve, pictured above).

But he’s earned his spurs, via the Uefa A license course and his role, now, is to smooth the transition from the Jose Mourinho era.

“I was always the leader of the game,” Zidane points out. It was something I loved, organising everything, influencing the game. Off the pitch less so. I’m naturally pretty reserved and in certain situations I can be pretty quiet.

“One thing I’ve learned is how little I know. When I was doing the coaching course sometimes my head would be aching by the time I got to bed. But that just made me all the more determined to keep at it and keep progressing.

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned on the courses is that I don’t have to be really close to someone for the working relationship to flourish. Obviously you need people you trust around you but first and foremost you must look for competent people with the right skills.

“I’ve changed a lot in this respect and nowadays am happy to work with someone I might not know well but who can do the job.

“Previously I worried about being betrayed by someone. It was a fear of putting my trust in someone who might then let me down.”

It seems clear Zidane is worried about how the squad will view him. The man who persuaded Rafa Varane and Isco to choose Madrid (and thus to have a vested interest in them succeeding)? Or ‘just’ Ancelotti’s coaching assistant?

“You can’t be a player’s buddy all the time. If you want him to give you 100 per cent you need to challenge him a bit, even manipulate him. It’s all about knowing when to use the carrot and the stick, when to reward and when to threaten him,” said Zidane.

“I don’t particularly like the word ‘manipulate’ but a coach has to get the best out of his players. At the end of the day chumminess doesn’t work. There’s no point saying to the guy, ‘Do it for me’.”

Tears, frustration and sleepless nights

Juventus, the ‘other’ love of his football life this week. Barcelona, where he scored an epic Champions League semi final goal for Los Blancos back in 2002, at the weekend in Ancelotti’s first Clasico.

Madrid have looked as if their teething troubles under Ancelotti are turning to colic. There have been tears, frustration and sleepless nights. But if 5/1 for the Champions League outright makes them ‘maybe’ winners then it’s fair. The squad is made up of rich fabrics, it’s just the knitting pattern they need now.

Equally IF La Liga slips away from them then their recent Champions League victories have often been accompanied by seasons when they haven’t had to apply all physical and attention to domestic work. They should be in the final shake-up and achieving the ‘Decima’ (their 10th title) isn’t outlandish.

This time at least Florentino is bringing us the real deal.

Zidane is back. Where he belongs.

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