Zinedine Zidane took part in the Slowmotions talks program on Hamidou Msaidie’s YouTube channel, along with David Bettoni, where they talked about their football experiences.Arrival at the first team: “I joined Madrid in 2014. On January 3 or 4, 2016, I started with the first team. It was quick for me. In six months, boom, I found myself with the first team. The transition is made naturally. You know the dressing room, you know how the player works… We worked a lot at the beginning, we arrived on Tuesday at 9 and left at 11 at night preparing things. We had the best team in the world. When you looked at the players you said to yourself: ‘If we do a good job, we can do something extraordinary’. And that’s how it was.”
“I remember we had three weeks and we didn’t have the European Cup, we didn’t have the Cup, only the League and we had three weeks to work. For three weeks we could work from Monday to the next match. We met with the four captains and told them what we wanted to do and they joined our project. Physically we had seen that they were not well, they were not well. We had seen all the data. We prepared the training sessions of 20, 30 minutes of cardio during the three weeks and we did it in the training center. Because in reality we had realized that they would need to do cardio, get gas, as we said. That allowed them, seeing the talent they had, to give them a physical level. And there were six months left. They had to work at that time, because then the Champions League was coming back.”
Turning point: “The game against Wolfsburg helped us in the Champions League final and even in La Liga. We showed that until the final, we were competitors. I told them that if we played against Atletico Madrid or Barcelona we would lose 100%. If we work together, then that’s when we can beat them and that’s what happened. In January we wouldn’t have beaten them and at the end of the season we beat both of them. Barcelona in La Liga and Atletico Madrid in the Champions League.”
The relationship with the players: “At Real Madrid we were at the disposal of the players. For me, that’s what makes the team strong, you’re there for the player. If you haven’t understood that, you can’t last in this profession. We’re there to support them; you have to show that you’re there for them. For the dressing room to accept what you want to implement, we have to be nice to them. If the players don’t agree with everything they’re given, the training sessions, something will always be missing. With us, I think they enjoyed it a lot on all levels.”
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