Zidane takes it hard!

Kylian Mbappé is criticised for his debut with Real Madrid, but a certain Zinédine Zidane had experienced worse during his debut with the Merengues in 2001.

Kylian Mbappé’s debut at Real Madrid has not been good so far. But a certain Zinédine Zidane had a similar mishap… After scoring in his first match with the Merengues, during the European Super Cup won against Atalanta, the new star number 9 did not convert his chances during the two inaugural Liga matches, in Mallorca (1-1) then against Valladolid (3-0). Last Sunday at the Bernabéu, after Mbappé went off in the 86th minute, it was Brahim Diaz and Endrick who added to the score…

To qualify the media treatment of the captain of the French team, Frédéric Hermel, the journalist from RMC, recalls Zidane’s first months in Madrid: “The little criticisms are nothing compared to what Zidane took at the time, I was there, I remember, because Zidane was the most expensive player in history, 75 million euros. Zidane took six months before finding his place in the Real eleven, he had taken a lot of flak, people were saying to themselves: ‘What a mistake did Florentino Perez make to pay so much money for a player who doesn’t work at Real Madrid’. And I’m not talking about Benzema, he took several years to be truly accepted and today he is a legend at Real Madrid.”.

Zidane’s Real Madrid have a difficult start

The former correspondent of The Team in the Spanish capital thus evokes “a passionate press”who praises and denigrates the same players from week to week, because of“a Hispanic exaggeration linked to culture, and that goes both ways”. As if to justify the distressing lack of objectiveness and lucidity of a majority of sports journalists in Spain. They are serious, neither in the information they give on a daily basis, nor in their reflection on football.

In 2001, “Zizou” had become the most expensive transfer in the history of football, Florentino Pérez definitively switching to the era of the Galacticos, launched the year before with the recruitment of Luis Figo. The Ballon d’Or 98 had difficulty adjusting to the Raul-Fernando Morientes duo under the orders of Vicente del Bosque. And if the number 5 found the back of the net, the Merengues had a poor start to the season, with only one victory in six matches. That was without counting on the talent of Zidane, who quickly became the remarkable playmaker of the team. The Marseillais ended up convincing everyone with a legendary goal scored against La Coruña in January 2002.