Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane returned to the club on Saturday and explained his 2021 exit in ... [+]
Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane returned to the club on Saturday and explained his 2021 exit in quotes carried by MARCA.
Madrid president Florentino Perez smashed the world transfer record to sign the Frenchman from Juventus 20 years before that, with Zidane winning the club its ninth Champions League title against Bayern Leverkusen in 2002.
Zidane stepped away from football in 2006 after losing the World Cup final for Les Bleus against Italy where he was famously sent off in the wake of headbutting Marco Materazzi.
A mind as great as his was always destined for management after hanging his boots up, however, and while first acting as current Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti's assistant, Zidane then took the reins himself and led the club from the Spanish capital to a "threepeat" of UCL crowns from 2016-2018.
A second stint in the hotseat wasn't as successful, though Zidane did make Madrid kings of Spain once more during the pandemic.
Returning to the Bernabeu 1026 days later for a legends match versus Porto this weekend, Zidane shed light on his exit triggered by a resignation.
"I know football and I know the demands of a club like Madrid. I know that when you don't win you have to leave, but here a very important thing has been forgotten - everything that I have built on a day-to-day basis has been forgotten, what I have contributed in the relationship with the players, with the one hundred and fifty people who work with and around the team," Zidane lamented.
"I am a born winner and I was here to win trophies, but beyond this are human beings, emotions, life. And I have the feeling that these things have not been valued, that it has not been understood that this is also how the dynamics of a great club are maintained.
"In some ways, I have even been reproached for it. Today the life of a coach on the bench of a great club is two seasons, not much more. For it to last longer, human relationships are essential, they are more important than money, more important than fame, more important than everything.
"You have to take care of them. That's why it hurt me a lot when I read in the press after a defeat that they were going to kick me out if I didn't win the next one," Zidane went on.
"It hurt me and the entire team because these messages intentionally leaked to the media created negative interference with the squad, and created doubts and misunderstandings."
Despite this, Zidane is still grateful for his time at the Bernabeu.
"Spending twenty years in Madrid has been the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me in my life and I know that I owe it exclusively to Florentino Perez who bet on me in 2001," Zidane confessed.
"Who fought for me, to make me come when there were certain people that were against it. I say it from the bottom of my heart, I will always be grateful to the president for that. Always," Zidane concluded.
