Arriving on the night of Thursday to Friday in Bordeaux, in the wake of the defeat in Italy, the Blues will spend three days there during this truce, more than in Clairefontaine. Which will not disturb Zinédine Zidane more than that, as he is at home on the banks of the Garonne which, after his native Marseille and his adopted Madrid, remains one of his privileged home ports. Because since his adventure with the Girondins de Bordeaux (1992-1996), the double Z has never really separated himself from the Sleeping Beauty.
“I became a man in Bordeaux, a husband, a dad, in a nice city. These are good memories,” smiled Zinédine Zidane a few days before returning to Bordeaux, where the Blues host Turkey during the 6th and final day of the Nations League, Sunday November 15. It is no coincidence that his first match in France away from Paris takes place on the banks of the Garonne, where the promising young midfielder from AS Cannes had been struggling for four seasons. Before flying to Italy at the end of an exceptional 1996 vintage, despite its bitter end.
4 years of maturing in Bordeaux
Zinédine Zidane didn't wait to be coach to return. Several times, he has set foot on the lawn of Lescure Park in recent years for charity matches, like the one organized for the 100th anniversary of the venue in 2024. A venue that the Blues will not find again, this time, the meeting taking place at the Atlantique stadium built for Euro 2016. But it is at Lescure Park that the Bordelais fell in love with Zinédine Zidane, and vice versa.
After three seasons at AS Cannes, Zinédine Zidane changed direction in the summer of 1992. He left his training club, relegated to D2, and despite the timid interest of Bernard Tapie's OM, he opted for the Girondins de Bordeaux, promoted to Ligue 1. In Gironde, the child from Castellane nevertheless found the warmth of the Marseille accent, with Rolland Courbis as coach. It was he who then nicknamed him Zizou, for the first time. For posterity. Under his orders, the promising young player resolves his recurring hamstring problems, gains strength, and gradually changes size.
With Bixente Lizarazu and Christophe Dugarry, Zinédine Zidane forms the Bordeaux triangle, and shines. The Girondins finished two years in a row in 4th place in D1, then in 7th. But it was nevertheless following this disappointing vintage that Zizou, the best hope of the championship in 1994-1995, would make history, with a 1995-1996 vintage like Bordeaux had never seen. With five goals in eight matches, he first offered the Girondins the Intertoto Cup during the summer.
More than this anecdotal trophy - his only title in Bordeaux -, Zinédine Zidane thus opens the doors of the UEFA Cup to his family. After a brilliant epic, marked by its anthology goal in Seville, and especially by the legendary quarter-final against AC Milan (0-2, 3-0), the Girondins de Bordeaux lost in the final against Bayern Munich, after having conquered French hearts, and beyond. In the days that followed, Juventus Turin attracted Zinédine Zidane, just crowned best player in D1 despite his team's 16th place, for 35 million francs (or around 6.8 million euros).
His baptism in the Blues, and almost as a coach
After four seasons, 44 goals and 42 assists in 196 games, Zinédine Zidane leaves Bordeaux in the rearview mirror. But don't forget it. Impossible for the man who had even privatized the Château du Haillan, the club's training center, for his wedding in May 1994. Which also made him miss his first selection for the French team, which finally took place on August 17, 1994... in Bordeaux. “I wasn't supposed to be there, Youri gets injured and as the match is in Bordeaux, Aimé Jacquet calls me for practical reasons. I'm there,” Zinédine Zidane told L'Équipe in June 2022.
"Eric Cantona had been great with me. He was the captain. He had given me the flag of the match", then added the double Z. And for good reason: entered in the 63rd minute of play, while the Czech Republic was leading 2-0, the playmaker had scored a legendary double, at 22 years old, with the number 14 on his back. Zidane in the text, first with a sequence of passing legs, double contact and strike from afar (85th). Then a prophetic header, four before the 1998 World Cup final, at the near post from a corner (87th). All this in front of his Bordeaux audience.
An audience that Zinédine Zidane could have found in 2014. At the time of Carlo Ancelotti's assistant at Real Madrid, the Frenchman considers himself ready to take the plunge. After Laurent Blanc, Bordeaux wants to launch the coaching career of another 1998 world champion. But the Gironde president, Jean-Louis Triaud, ends up abandoning the track in the face of the reluctance of Zidane's agent, skeptical about the means made available to the man who will finally launch his new career 18 months later, on the bench of Real Madrid, before winning the Champions League 145 days later.
Would Zinédine Zidane be on the bench for the Blues on Sunday against Turkey if he had accepted the position at the Girondins in 2014? History will never tell. Still, the link that unites it with Bordeaux is enriched by a new episode, Sunday, from 8:45 p.m. at the Atlantique stadium. With an outcome, we hope, more positive than Thursday in Italy. In which case, all the love of the Bordelais will not be enough to console Zinédine Zidane, at the end of a truce that has so far been complicated for his Blues.
