Zinedine Zidane Returns as France Head Coach

Zinedine Zidane is finally heading back to where many always believed he was destined to end up: the France dugout.

According to ESPN, the 53-year-old has reached a verbal agreement with the Fédération Française de Football to take over as head coach of the national team after this summer’s FIFA World Cup, stepping in for Didier Deschamps, who has been in charge since 2012.

It marks the latest chapter in a career that has rarely strayed far from the game’s highest peaks. As a coach, Zidane built his reputation at Real Madrid, where he enjoyed two glittering spells in charge between 2016-18 and 2019-21, guiding a squad of superstars with the same calm authority he once showed with the ball at his feet.

For France, this is more than a change on the touchline. It is the return of a symbol.

Zidane has long been viewed as the natural heir to Deschamps, the man who would eventually take on the responsibility of leading the country he once carried as a player. His résumé as a footballer remains one of the most decorated in modern history: winner of the 1998 Ballon d’Or, and three-time FIFA World Player of the Year in 1998, 2000 and 2003.

On the international stage, his legacy is woven into French football’s identity. Zidane drove France to World Cup glory on home soil in 1998, the night he rose twice to head past Brazil and turned a generation of players into immortals. Eight years later, he dragged an aging side all the way to the 2006 final, dictating games with a serenity that seemed to slow time.

That tournament ended with one of the most infamous images in World Cup history: Zidane, sent off in the final after head-butting Italy’s Marco Materazzi in the chest. A red card, a walk past the trophy he would never lift again, and a career that closed in a moment of raw, human volatility.

Now, the man who once defined France from the center circle is poised to define it from the technical area. The expectations will be brutal, the scrutiny relentless. But for a country that has spent years wondering when Zidane would come home, the real question is different: what does a Zidane-led France look like in the modern game—and how far can it go?