Why Manchester United managerial target Zinedine Zidane once again serves as a spectre for Jose Mourinho
Zidane’s status as the most successful, available manager right now means he again serves as a spectre for Mourinho, but he is not yet United's first choice
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Your support makes all the difference.It was a moment that “unnerved” Jose Mourinho, although that may now be a feeling increasingly familiar to him. Many of the circumstances are certainly familiar.
Back in early 2012, the Real Madrid squad were already fed up of Mourinho, and that in spite of the fact they were heading for a record-breaking league title. Many of those players still feel they actually ended up winning it in spite of his management.
An emotionally exhausted group just found the atmosphere he created unsustainably intense and unnecessarily abrasive, with reactive tactics that ultimately didn’t suit them or the club.
So much of this came to a head before the Copa Del Rey quarter-final second leg away to Barcelona. Pep Guardiola’s side had brilliantly won the first leg 2-0, and the story - according to Diego Torres’ enthralling book, ‘The Special One: the Dark Side of Jose Mourinho’ - was that Mourinho was insistent on a destructive and defensive gameplan as much to prove a point as to actually try and rescue the tie. Torres alleges the Portuguese argued Madrid would then be able to “blame the referees”, in a game intended become a “dialectical argument”.
After a team talk that raised eyebrows and some emotion in the dressing room, Mourinho invited Zinedine Zidane to speak, especially since the then sporting director had been successfully encouraged by president Florentino Perez to offer supportive public comment to the manager during a contentious spell.
What he said could not be seen as support.
“You’re very good players and you should try to beat Barcelona,” Zidane so simply asserted. “We are Real Madrid and Real Madrid always go out to win.”
Mourinho reportedly gave the Frenchman a withering look and it was a month before Zidane was again seen around the first-team squad.
For many close to the Old Trafford hierarchy now, it may only be a month or so until Zidane is with the Manchester United first-team squad - but instead of Mourinho rather than alongside him.
The elementarily adventurous attitude articulated in that fateful meeting is seen as a major reason why Zidane would be so suited to United, and why he has won a record-equalling three Champions Leagues.
Only added to that, Zidane’s status as the most successful, available manager right now means he again serves as a spectre for Mourinho. For so many others at United, he is a symbolic ideal so appealingly at odds with the grim present reality.
The actual reality of Zidane’s own situation is naturally much more complicated than any ideal, with the contrasting views of his approach only feeding into that.
For a start, the 46-year-old is far from United’s first choice for the next manager, whenever that may be. That remains Mauricio Pochettino. While United’s leading executives don’t know which way to go on Mourinho, though, they also don’t know which way to go on Zidane.
There is a feeling Zidane’s approach is as simplistic as that conveyed in that short speech, and may actually only suit a very specific set of circumstances, as at Real Madrid. The somewhat embittered accusation from someone at the Bernabeu that he is little more than a “clap-your-hands” coach remains. Even if that is unfair, the reality is United now require a lot more than facilitation of talent. They need force of personality, and the hard work of top-to-bottom reconstruction, something that three Champions Leagues still doesn’t any way indicate Zidane is actually capable of.
There is a big difference between delicate touches to a complete team in knock-out games and complete change to an unfinished one over a long project.
For the Frenchman’s own part, there is highly contradictory information over whether he would even be all that interested in the United job.
Elements of it undeniably appeal to him, but sources from Spain say there are a lot of reasons to doubt it.
First of all, Zidane had told Perez that he wants to take time to relax, and plan his next move. It is unknown whether he intended for that to be a full season, like Guardiola in 2012-13, but tempering it is a belief that Zidane isn’t actually all that professionally energised by management and it is only specific jobs that would appeal: namely, the French national team.
Either way, he is not seen as someone who would take a big-name job just to stay in the game, just to stay a manager. He is more selective than that, something his position has allowed.
Hugely relevant to this is the very reason he is said to have ultimately left Madrid. High-level Bernabeu sources say Zidane knew that Cristiano Ronaldo would be sold this summer, and knew that the club would only be buying full-back Alvaro Odriozola and a goalkeeper, who ended up being Thibaut Courtois.
Even leaving aside the fact he has always fully trusted Keylor Navas, Zidane felt this was now a squad that was in increasing need of deep renovation, and one that wasn’t coming.
Some sources thereby believe that the prospect of taking over this Manchester United squad, in contrast to that, is not that appealing.
This is where we come back to the reconstruction job required at Old Trafford, the difficult defining of a team identity that is long way removed from Zidane’s simple speech.
It’s just that the appeal of a job can change when a contract for it is put in your lap, along with a lucrative salary.
That would still require a change of circumstances with Mourinho, something executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward is not yet moved to do.
He might do well to read another anecdote from the Bernabeu which involves Zidane. The story goes that, towards the end of the 2011-12 season, the Frenchman advised Perez that persisting with Mourinho would see the club head for “a sterile crisis”. Is there a more apt description for what is happening at Old Trafford now?
It came to pass at Madrid, as Perez admitted.
“It’s happening as Zizou said it would,” Torres quotes the president as wailing. “It’s happening just as Zizou said.”
It doesn't mean what will happen at United will proceed as so many others seem to say right now. Zidane’s reported analysis was right. It doesn't necessarily follow that Zidane is right for United. As with his own situation, it's much more complicated than his message.
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