What to remember about Enzo Zidane’s career

A hard name to bear. Having a Ballon d’Or winner, world champion, European champion, legend of French football and Real Madrid as a father and having a career in football behind it is not easy. Enzo Zidane will not say otherwise. Launched with the Real Madrid reserve ten years ago, on November 16, 2014 against UD Conquense, the young attacking midfielder wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Then aged 19, Enzo Zidane slowly but surely discovered a high level of competition with the Spanish 3rd division. With eight matches for his first season, he followed up with a solid 2015/2016 campaign where he scored 2 goals and provided 10 assists in 38 matches. His first two seasons with Castilla where he spent a year and a half under the orders of his father Zinedine.

The latter had also spoken about what he thought of his son as a footballer in an interview for The world in February 2015: “Everything is going well. I treat him like I treat other players. Is Enzo as good as his father? No (laughs)! Not yet. But he is only 19 years old. It would be incredible if he were as good today as I was at my best. I hope for his sake that he will be and even that he will manage to be better than me.” Beginning to become a reference at this level of competition, Enzo Zidane will stay another year at Real Madrid during the 2016/2017 season where he will score 5 goals and 5 assists in 32 matches with the reserve team and will even be the team captain. He will also experience his first call-ups at 21 years old with the first team and will play a single match as Merengues in the Copa del Rey against Cultural Leonesa (6-1). Coming into play in place of Isco at half-time, he will also offer himself a goal.

The post-Madrid period was complicated

“To start with Real Madrid and score a goal is a dream and I am very happy that it happened at the Bernabeu and with a victory at the end. It was a great night. I had to wait for my time and it came. But this is just the beginning, we have to keep working to get other opportunities and help the team.” Enzo Zidane confided after this meeting, it would ultimately be his last notable moment with the Casa Blanca. Wanting to finally take off that his career needed at 22 years old and knowing the difficulty of establishing himself at Real Madrid, Enzo Zidane would head to the Basque Country and Deportivo Alavés. And that’s where his career would gradually get bogged down. Although he would play two of the Basques’ first three matches in La Liga against FC Barcelona and Celta de Vigo, he would not play in La Liga again. Not in the plans of Gianni De Biasi who quickly replaced coach Luis Zubeldia while the latter was fond of technical profiles, Enzo Zidane would completely disappear. Four appearances with two Copa del Rey matches in addition and that’s it. He would be pushed towards the exit in the winter and join Switzerland.

Signing for Lausanne, he will find some sensations by quickly becoming a starter and scoring 2 goals and 1 assist in 16 matches. Unfortunately for him, the Swiss club will finish last in its championship and will be relegated to the second division. Trying a return to Spain by being loaned to Rayo Majadahonda, Enzo Zidane will contribute his stone to the building by alternating between starting and coming on as substitutes (33 appearances) but will ultimately have a weak impact on his team and will also find himself relegated by two small points. Returning from his loan to Lausanne, he will ultimately not be kept on and will have to commit on a free to Portugal where the nightmare will continue. In a club that will be relegated at the end of the season, he will only play 11 matches for 2 goals and will leave in the winter for Almeria. Joining an ambitious project, Enzo Zidane will not play much more with 4 appearances and will be released in October 2020.

A failure in France and a third return to Spain

Having remained without a club and without a player for almost a year, Enzo Zidane will take the gamble of joining France at 26 years old and more precisely the Rodez club in Ligue 2. Wanting to find a healthy and stable environment where he can refocus on football, Enzo Zidane arrived with a lot of motivation: “I want to have fun on the pitch. To enjoy myself. I have the ambition to do something here in the long term. I hope to find a club where I can flourish and I hope that RAF will be that club. My game? I like to break the lines with passes, or create gaps. I am a team player. I am more of a passer, but I like to score.“If he joins the group in the first part of the season, he will disappear from the team from February when the club was concerned about staying up. With only 445 minutes played with Rodez in 16 appearances, Enzo Zidane will have finally experienced an unremarkable return. Not kept, he will finally opt for a new return to Spain on the Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrada.

In the third division, he will be able to show his advantage with 1 goal and 4 offerings in 29 matches and there again the words were the same with this desire for stability: “Fuenlabrada can give me a lot, especially enjoying football again, which in recent years has been complicated. I came to find stability and enjoy football again, to become a footballer again. I will try to give the best of myself. I am a player who likes to have the ball and when the team has it, I can take care of it. I have the ability to make the final pass. For everything else, I will always give my all because football is a constant back and forth.” Having stayed only one more year at this club, Enzo Zidane was free since July 2023. Having gone more than a year without playing, he finally decided to hang up his boots at the age of 29. If his performances in the Spanish third division were good and his technical quality was noticed, his adaptation to the highest level and stability will have been missed.