After the appetizer, the menu got tougher. For his second day at Clairefontaine as coach of the France team, Zinédine Zidane changed gear on Tuesday September 22. The day after a first light session with 12 players on the pitch, Zizou and his staff were able to count on a full group, apart from the last minute package of Kylian Mbappé, bedridden by a flu illness. After skipping lunch, the captain of the Blues was the only one missing at the end of the afternoon, when the Blues crossed the Clairefontaine area towards the Pierre-Pibarot stadium.
For the first time since the end of last spring, the Tricolores found their audience there. Around 400 lucky people were invited by the French Football Federation for a signing session, to which the 22 players attended with a smile, responding to almost all requests. Eduardo Camavinga was even seen filming an impromptu promotional video for a match evening in a café, "without alcohol of course", specified the Madrid midfielder. From the applause meter, Bradley Barcola emerged victorious, behind Ousmane Dembélé, to whom part of the public promised the Golden Ball.
Dembélé at the forefront of an attacking 4-3-3
Carefully avoided by the players since their arrival at Clairefontaine, and in particular by Esteban Lepaul at a press conference in the morning, the subject of the Ballon d'or was nevertheless on everyone's lips, whether those of the castle staff, the public, but also the followers. Another concern of the crowd who came for the first training session open to the curious: the absences of Kylian Mbappé and Zinédine Zidane. If the first was bedridden, the coach had decided, knowingly, not to come and steal the spotlight from his players, while he had already attracted all the attention since his appointment.
If this decision made people unhappy - more among the parents than among the children present, in fact - Zizou came to greet the public at the end of training, and to sign a few autographs, accompanied by Fabien Barthez. So much so that there weren't many people left disappointed when it was time to leave the place at sunset. Not even among journalists, since today's training provided its share of clues about the coach's tactical ideas. Like the day before, the ball was everywhere in the session, even if a few players repeated the sprints at the end of training, under the eyes of part of the France Espoirs team, whom Zizou had gone to greet in the morning.
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While the schedule for this truce is busy, Zinédine Zidane did not wait for the closed session scheduled for Wednesday to carry out tactical implementations. Less observant and more interventionist than the day before, the former number ten distilled collective and individual instructions throughout the hour and a half of training. Above all, he - a priori - revealed his preferred playing pattern, identical to what he did at Real Madrid: a 4-3-3 with a sentry and two more attacking midfielders. A role in which he is visibly expecting Rayan Cherki and Maghnes Akliouche, alongside regulars Adrien Rabiot, Manu Koné, Eduardo Camavinga, and the new kid Lucas Da Cunha, with whom he has exchanged a lot.
If the staff had taken care to mix the probable starters in two separate teams, it escaped no one's notice that Michael Olise was used in the right lane, as at club, but not as under Deschamps. Above all: Ousmane Dembélé was aligned in the scoring position, again as at club, he who was always used on the right in the selection until now. Which would lead to a return of Kylian Mbappé to the left lane, as implied by Zinédine Zidane when announcing his list. In his absence, Bradley Barcola was the only one to occupy the position on Tuesday.
To have confirmation of these first clues, we will have to wait for the first match, scheduled in Türkiye, on Friday. A Nations League poster that the new management of the Blues are pining for, who insist on the importance of a victory to fully launch this new era, both from a media point of view and within the locker room. Because nothing is better than a victory to seal the foundations of a project. Before that, the Blues will train behind closed doors on Wednesday, at Clairefontaine, before taking off on Thursday for Izmit, 110 kilometers east of Istanbul. This is where Zinédine Zidane's mandate will begin in earnest.
