Zinedine Zidane appeared on Hamidou Msaidie’s YouTube program Slowmotions, joined by David Bettoni, to talk about his football experiences. “I joined Real Madrid in 2014. On January 3rd or 4th, 2016, I started with the first team. It was fast for me. In six months, boom, I found myself with the first team. The transition happens naturally. You get to know the dressing room, you know how the players operate… We worked a lot at the beginning, arriving on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. and leaving at 11 p.m. preparing everything. We had the best team in the world. When you looked at the players, you'd say to yourself: ‘If we do a good job, we can do something extraordinary.’ And that's exactly what happened.”

Reflecting on his first decisions, Zidane added, “I remember we had three weeks, and we didn’t have the Champions League, just the league, so we had three weeks to work. For those three weeks, we worked from Monday until the next match. We met with the four captains and told them what we wanted to do, and they joined our project. Physically, we realized the players weren’t in top shape. We reviewed all the data and prepared 20-30 minute cardio workouts during those three weeks at the training center. That got their fitness levels up because we knew the Champions League was coming back and we needed them ready.”

Looking back at a turning point that season, he explained, “The match against Wolfsburg helped us in the Champions League final and even in La Liga. Up until the final, we showed we were competitive. I told the players that if we faced Atlético Madrid or Barcelona in January, we would lose 100%. But if we worked together, we could beat them—and that’s what happened. By the end of the season, we beat both: Barcelona in La Liga and Atlético Madrid in the Champions League.”

Speaking about his relationship with the players, Zidane emphasized, “At Real Madrid, we were at the players’ disposal. For me, that’s what makes a team strong; you have to be there for the players. If you don’t understand that, you won’t last in this profession. You need to support them and show you’re there for them. For the dressing room to accept what you want to implement, they need to like you. If the players don’t agree with what they’re given, the training sessions, something will always be missing. With us, I think they enjoyed it a lot on every level.”

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