Tom Sanderson
Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane returned to the club on Saturday and explained his 2021 exit in quotes carried by MARCA.
Madrid president Florentino Perez smashed the world transfer record to sign the Frenchman from Juventus 20 years before that, with Zidane winning the club its ninth Champions League title against Bayern Leverkusen in 2002.
Zidane stepped away from football in 2006 after losing the World Cup final for Les Bleus against Italy where he was famously sent off in the wake of headbutting Marco Materazzi.
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A mind as great as his was always destined for management after hanging his boots up, however, and while first acting as current Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti’s assistant, Zidane then took the reins himself and led the club from the Spanish capital to a “threepeat” of UCL crowns from 2016-2018.
A second stint in the hotseat wasn’t as successful, though Zidane did make Madrid kings of Spain once more during the pandemic.
Returning to the Bernabeu 1026 days later for a legends match versus Porto this weekend, Zidane shed light on his exit triggered by a resignation.
“I know football and I know the demands of a club like Madrid. I know that when you don’t win you have to leave, but here a very important thing has been forgotten – everything that I have built on a day-to-day basis has been forgotten, what I have contributed in the relationship with the players, with the one hundred and fifty people who work with and around the team,” Zidane lamented.
First published by: Forbes
