Zinedine Zidane Returns as France National Team Coach
Zinedine Zidane has come home.
The French Football Federation confirmed on Tuesday that the 54-year-old will take over as head coach of the national team, stepping into one of the most demanding and glamorous jobs in world football.
His arrival ends a brief but seismic interlude. Just two weeks have passed since Didier Deschamps’ 14-year reign concluded with a chaotic 6-4 defeat to England and a fourth-place finish at the World Cup. One era shut its door; another, laden with history and expectation, swings open.
Deschamps leaves a monumental legacy. Across 185 matches, he collected 120 wins and filled the federation’s trophy cabinet: the 2018 World Cup, the 2020-21 UEFA Nations League, and runs to the Euro 2016 and 2022 World Cup finals. For more than a decade, France moved to his rhythm – pragmatic, disciplined, relentlessly competitive.
Now the team passes to a man whose footballing identity could hardly be more different.
From legend on the pitch to leader on the touchline
Zidane is not just another appointment. He is the enduring image of France’s first World Cup triumph, the conductor of 1998, the Ballon d’Or winner that same year, and the symbol of a golden generation that changed the country’s football forever.
He and Deschamps share a long, intertwined history. Teammates in that 1998 side that lifted the World Cup on home soil, they now form a unique relay of power: the captain who built a dynasty handing the baton to the playmaker who defined its soul.
This is not Zidane’s first supercharged role in the spotlight. As manager of Real Madrid, he collected trophies at a rate few could match. Now he inherits a France squad stacked with talent and expectation, but also the weight of a nation that has grown used to playing for titles, not just respectability.
A new reign, and a tough opening act
Zidane is expected to begin his tenure with an away UEFA Nations League fixture against Turkiye, a demanding first test in a competition France have already won once under Deschamps. The timing leaves little room for a gentle introduction. Systems must be installed, hierarchies clarified, and a new voice must ring out in the dressing room almost immediately.
After Turkiye, the stakes rise again. France will host Italy at the Stade de France on October 2, a fixture heavy with history and emotion, and the kind of night Zidane has always seemed born for. Under the lights in Saint-Denis, the country will get its first real glimpse of what his France might look like: how boldly he attacks, how tightly he controls games, how he manages the balance between freedom and structure.
The symbolism is impossible to ignore. The stadium where Zidane wrote some of his most famous chapters as a player now becomes the stage for his first major home test as national coach.
Deschamps exits with medals, records, and respect. Zidane enters with aura, expectation, and a different kind of promise.
France have traded one World Cup-winning icon for another. The question now is not whether Zidane can handle the job, but how far he can push a team already accustomed to the summit.
