SEPTEMBER 20 ― According to the cliché, it’s better to be a lucky leader than a good leader. But in these early months of his managerial career it appears that Zinedine Zidane is blessed with being both.
On Sunday night, Zidane’s Real Madrid team won their 16th consecutive league game, breaking a club record which had stood for more than half a century and also tying a La Liga’s all-time record, set by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona in 2011.
In addition, of course, Zidane also enjoyed the major achievement of leading Madrid to their 11th Champions League title at the end of last season, so it’s fair to say his time in charge of one of the most demanding clubs in the world could not really have gone any better ― especially as he inherited a fairly hopeless situation from beleaguered predecessor Rafa Benitez.
To begin with, let’s look at the “lucky” part, because it’s fair to say Zidane has benefited from more than a few slices of fortune.
In last season’s Champions League, for example, Madrid received an extremely soft route to the final, avoiding all the big guns in the knockout stages and instead being paired with less than formidable opponents in the form of Roma, Wolfsburg and Manchester City.
Then, in the final itself, they were unable to kill off Atletico Madrid despite a dominant start and were eventually only triumphant after a penalty shoot-out, which is the closest thing to a flip of a coin that professional sport has to offer.
Zidane’s team have also been fortunate in several of the league victories on their record 16-game winning run. In just the third of those games, for example, they played atrociously against Las Palmas and appeared to be heading for a 1-1 draw ― which would have in itself been barely deserved ― before Casemiro popped up with an 89th minute winner.
And their luck has held all the way through to their most recent outing, a 2-0 victory at Espanyol on Sunday night which should have seen captain Sergio Ramos sent off for handball after he had already received a yellow card ― but an improvised piece of play-acting from Ramos, who pretended the ball hit him in the face rather than on the hand, was enough to fool the referee.
So, yes, Zidane has been lucky. But there is a lot, lot more to it than that, and you certainly don’t win that many consecutive games in the best league in the world simply by being lucky.
Another cliché states that you make your own luck, and I believe that is certainly the case for Zidane because he has done the obvious yet elusive thing which all successful managers simply must be good at: consistently making good decisions.
The first major decision taken by the French icon came at the end of February, when he had been in the job for less than six months and his team had just deservedly lost 1-0 at home to local rivals Atletico after a very poor performance.
Until then, Zidane had attempted to accommodate as many of his “big-name” attacking stars in the line-up as possible by employing a hybrid 4-3-3/4-4-2 formation which saw various players change positions depending upon whether the team was in attack or defence.
It was an ingenious idea but too unwieldy in a fast-paced game, and the game against Atletico showed it wasn’t working.
From that moment, Zidane changed his approach and immediately made defensive midfielder Casemiro, who had previously been out of the team, an automatic selection in the starting eleven.
Now, Casemiro is probably the least-known and least technically gifted member of the Madrid squad, but he is athletic, big and strong, firm in the tackle and possesses tactical discipline ― exactly the attributes the team needed to provide a greater balance between defence and attack, and the Brazilian has quickly become a key member of the team’s success.
His presence as a starter, however, has required Zidane to show another of his great qualities: his ability to manage the egos within his group of superstars.
With everyone fit, the team’s strongest eleven now has no place for either Isco or James Rodriguez ― two gifted players who are (largely) popular with the fans and the media, and who know they would be guaranteed to play at practically any other club.
Keeping them happy and avoiding upsetting the morale of the group, which is so important to sustained success, is no easy task whatsoever and can easily destroy the sense of unity within a group if it is badly handled.
It is obvious that Zidane has an “A” team and that everyone else will only play limited minutes, but the respect he commands from all his players, his sensitive public approach to fringe players, and the way he has rotated his squad to give everyone plenty of playing time have allowed the potential explosion to be controlled.
And that was shown clearly on Sunday night, when James ― who has rarely started under Zidane and was heavily linked with a summer transfer ― was named in the starting line-up at Espanyol and responded with a fully committed performance and the opening goal.
That little example shows how well Zidane has managed the enormous amount of talent at his disposal: making tough decisions to benefit the team’s overall structure but still keeping everyone in the squad feeling involved and, if not happy, at least satisfied.
There is a long way to go and Zidane will really need to end his team’s four-year wait for a Spanish league title before he can start to be hailed as a great coach rather than a promising coach. But he’s done everything right so far.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
