Zinedine Zidane Takes Over as France Head Coach
Zinedine Zidane has come home.
The French Football Federation confirmed on Tuesday that the former midfield maestro will take over as head coach of the national team, stepping into the role vacated by Didier Deschamps after France’s fourth-place finish at the World Cup.
The announcement ends years of speculation and delivers what many in French football long considered inevitable: the country’s greatest modern player now in charge of its greatest modern generation.
End of an era, start of another
Deschamps departs after 14 years in the job, a reign that reshaped the identity and expectations of Les Bleus. He oversaw 185 matches and collected 120 wins, numbers that only hint at the scale of his impact.
His France lifted the 2018 World Cup, claimed the 2020-21 UEFA Nations League and reached two more major finals — Euro 2016 on home soil and the 2022 World Cup. Under him, France became a tournament machine, hardened, pragmatic and relentlessly competitive.
It ended in chaos and goals. His final match in charge was a wild 6-4 defeat to England, a result that underlined both the attacking talent at his disposal and the sense that a cycle had run its course.
Zidane steps into the spotlight
Now comes Zidane, 54, carrying a different kind of aura.
The former Real Madrid manager, a serial winner at club level, will begin his tenure with an away UEFA Nations League fixture against Turkiye, before France host Italy at the Stade de France on October 2. It is a suitably heavyweight start: a testing trip, then a classic European clash in Saint-Denis, where so many of Zidane’s defining moments unfolded.
For France, this is not just a change of coach. It is a change of tone.
Deschamps built a team in his own image — disciplined, controlled, often conservative in the biggest moments. Zidane, the player, was the opposite: expressive, daring, capable of bending games and tournaments to his will. The tension between those two legacies will shape what comes next.
From 1998 to 2026
Their stories have been intertwined for decades. Deschamps and Zidane stood side by side in 1998, captaining and conducting France to their first World Cup title on home soil. One lifted the trophy; the other lit up the final.
Zidane’s two headed goals against Brazil in that Paris night became part of French sporting folklore. That same year he claimed the Ballon d’Or, confirmation of his status as the finest player on the planet.
Now he inherits the job once owned by his former teammate, with a squad packed with stars who grew up watching his highlights rather than sharing a dressing room with him. The dynamic shifts: from idol to boss.
A new kind of pressure
Zidane arrives with immense credit from his time at Real Madrid, where he managed big egos, bigger expectations and delivered major trophies. International football, though, is a different beast. Less time on the training ground. Longer gaps between games. Tournament football as a series of three-week storms.
The expectations will be immediate. France are not in rebuild mode. They are in contention mode. Anything less than deep runs at major tournaments will feel like underachievement.
The first glimpse of Zidane’s France will come in Turkiye. The first roar of a new era will follow when Italy walk out at the Stade de France in October.
For a nation that has grown used to success, the question is no longer whether France can compete. Under Zidane, it becomes sharper, more ambitious: how far can they go now that their greatest conductor holds the baton?
