Zinedine Zidane Takes Over as France Head Coach

Zinedine Zidane has come home.

The French Football Federation confirmed on Tuesday that the former midfield maestro will take over as head coach of the national team, stepping into one of the most scrutinised roles in world football and succeeding Didier Deschamps after a 14-year reign.

The announcement ends years of speculation around when, not if, Zidane would one day sit in the France dugout. The wait is over. At 54, the former Real Madrid coach finally inherits the team he once illuminated as a player.

Deschamps exits with a record that would intimidate most successors. He leaves after France’s fourth-place finish at the World Cup, his final match a wild 6-4 defeat to England that underlined both the team’s attacking power and its defensive frailty. Across 185 matches, he collected 120 victories and stacked the trophy cabinet: the 2018 World Cup, the 2020-21 UEFA Nations League, and runs to the Euro 2016 and 2022 World Cup finals.

That is the standard Zidane walks into.

The first steps of his tenure are already mapped out. He is expected to begin with an away UEFA Nations League fixture against Turkiye, a testing assignment for a coach still imposing his ideas, before France return to the Stade de France to host Italy on October 2. Two games, two emotionally charged opponents, and no gentle easing-in period.

There is rich symmetry in this handover. Deschamps and Zidane are bound by history, teammates at the heart of the 1998 World Cup-winning side that transformed French football. Deschamps wore the armband and anchored the midfield; Zidane, the artist, delivered the decisive moments and claimed the Ballon d’Or that same year.

Now their paths cross again, one stepping away after building an era, the other stepping in with the weight of that legacy on his shoulders.

Zidane arrives not just as a national icon but as a proven elite coach, shaped by his time at Real Madrid. Yet this job is different. This is the shirt he once wore, the anthem he once listened to with eyes closed and jaw set, the stadiums where his name still draws a murmur before it is sung.