Tottenham vs Real Madrid: Zinedine Zidane heads to Wembley with questions being asked about his future

"Zidane loses his powers" concluded Spanish sports daily AS in a headline. A touch far, perhaps, but a test now lies ahead for Zinedine Zidane and it's the biggest yet for a coach who has lived something of a charmed life since replacing Rafael Benitez as Real Madrid manager in January 2016.

Less than six months after he stood alongside Florentino Perez to be presented as boss - as an aside, Rafa had not yet even been informed of his sacking by the Madrid heirarchy - Zidane was preparing his side for a Champions League final in Milan. They would win, as they did a year later in Cardiff - two-time winners of club football's biggest trophy inside 18 months of Zizou taking over as coach.

Where they are now is somewhere altogether more concerning.

You wouldn't rule them out of a third consecutive final, nor a fourth European Cup in five seasons, and yet the feeling around the club is somewhat different. Feeling the breath on the back of their neck from the continent's nouveau riche, a lot of what has set Madrid back this season has been way out of the Frenchman's control - Cristiano Ronaldo's long suspension that left his side shorn of the world's most potent goal threat, Madrid being outbid for Kylian Mbappé and not being able to convince Milan to sell Gianluigi Donnarumma - but the things that are within his control have equally not gone so well.

Where last year substitutes and late goals were bailing the Blancos out in tough spots, this season has seen no such luck. His side looked tired as they slumped to defeat in Girona on Sunday, not to mention complacent.

Zidane has little sway over the club's transfer policy but has been less than subtle in his dismay over being left short up front. Alvaro Morata's sale, part of a big summer clearout that made them a €75m profit, didn't fund any incomings in attack and with that Ronaldo suspension, Karim Benzema out of form and Gareth Bale injured in the opening months of the season, they have paid the price, drifting eight points off Barcelona in La Liga.

And yet while it is easy to paint Zidane as the neutered glamour face of the franchise, a man with no overriding power who just keeps things ticking over, the fact is that he has been a popular coach that the players felt an affinity with. Perhaps the issue is that there was little more to him than that?

Prior to the Champions League final against Atletico in Milan, every Real Madrid player was asked what their rookie coach had done to turn things around from the stale Benitez days.
As discussed on this week's IndyFootball podcast (below), not one of them could come up with a tangible reason.

Bale cited the freedom afforded to the front three but that had actually already come late in the Rafa regime. Casemiro couldn't name anything. Mateo Kovacic was similarly mute. Marcelo said they were "more united" at least and, by the time Sergio Ramos was speaking, there were at least suggestions of an impact, albeit of "happiness" and "feeling" within the group. "Empathy" is the word that would eventually crop up the most.

If the problem with Benitez was that his lack of elite playing career had meant touchy players resented being handed technical advice from el diez - 'the number ten', an ironic nickname the players had for Rafa - then Zidane was the opposite. He'd won it all as a player and he made them feel happy, "in many ways like Ancelotti" said Ramos.

To cut a long story short, Zidane got on better with the players than Benitez had. They liked him so they listened to him. He made small but deliberate changes to a pretty well-oiled machine and rotated the squad well. That simple formula brought him immense success over his time in charge but what if that has worn off? Is he able to make the big calls or impactful decisions to turn a bad situation on its head?

If there is one thing we know with Florentino Perez it is that there is no coach he would not fire. There is a story of him and club director Jose Angel Sanchez daring each other to fire Zidane when he was the coach of their flailing second team, Castilla. A draw or win at Wembley against Tottenham would almost certainly see Madrid through to the knockout phase of the Champions League, handing Zidane a reprieve.

But it wasn't enough for Benitez, who had done the same only to fall four points behind Atletico at the top of the league. Zizou needs to make up double that deficit. A win against Tottenham changes the mood, but it still might not change Florentino Perez's habit of a lifetime somewhere down the line.