Zidane waits in the wings as France prepares a familiar football handover

France is about to do what it often does best in football: turn a managerial change into a national ceremony. The French Football Federation said on Thursday that its president, Philippe Diallo, will name the new coach at a news conference next Tuesday at its headquarters in Paris. All signs point to Zinedine Zidane, a man whose reputation still travels faster than most teams.

If the appointment is confirmed, it will close the Deschamps era and open a chapter that has been whispered about for months. Deschamps spent 14 years in charge of Les Bleus, a tenure long enough to become part of the furniture. He left after the World Cup, where France reached the semifinals before losing to Spain. That is not a disgrace, but it is also not the sort of ending that keeps a federation from looking ahead.

Zidane, now 54, has not coached since leaving Real Madrid in 2021. His record there is the kind of thing that makes football boards look for a miracle and then pretend they found one by accident: three straight Champions League titles from 2016 to 2018. As a player, he was even more than a collector of trophies. He was France’s playmaker in the 1998 World Cup, scored twice in the final against Brazil, starred in the 2000 European Championship and won the Ballon d’Or that same year.

His France career was not without its dramatic excesses, because football rarely allows its icons to behave like accountants. Zidane played 108 matches for his country and scored 31 goals. He also produced the Panenka-style penalty in the 2006 World Cup final, a match France lost after he was sent off in extra time for headbutting Marco Materazzi. The memory has not faded, which is usually how it works with great players: the brilliance and the lapse are filed together.

Deschamps, for his part, leaves with the strongest possible argument in his favour. France won the World Cup under him in 2018 and reached the final again in 2022, losing on penalties. The team also fell in the European Championship final on home soil in 2016. That is a record most federations would frame. In Paris, apparently, it is also a prompt to look for the next symbol.

The calendar will not wait for the ceremony. France’s next Nations League matches are away to Turkey on Sept. 25, then in Belgium three days later, before Italy visit the Stade de France on Oct. 2. If Zidane is indeed the man chosen, he will inherit not a rebuilding job but a standard that France has spent years setting and, inconveniently, meeting. The real question is whether a federation that already had success now wants continuity — or simply a more glamorous version of it.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com