It was nine days before the end of the last century that Zinedine Zidane officially handed over the most valuable individual prize in world football.
He had been the soaraway winner of the 1998 Ballon d’Or and it may surprise those who have followed the process of voting for the world’s best footballer over the last eight years, that Zidane only ever collected the award once in his career.
The greatest players of the current generation by contrast, tend to carve up the Ballons d’Or, also known as the Fifa World Player of the Year, as a pair, a duopoly.
If it is not Lionel Messi's, it is Cristiano Ronaldo's, and one of the two will make off with it again in Zurich on Monday as 2015's top man.
Ronaldo, the holder, will then return to work under the fifth different coach he has taken orders from in five and a half years as a Real Madrid footballer.
His new boss is the first coach he has had who can congratulate him on winning, or commiserate with him about relinquishing the Ballon d’Or knowing exactly what it feels like.
Read more:
I wish Zidane good luck at Real Madrid. He is going to need it, writes Diego Forlan
Zidane won the Ballon d’Or on the back of his inspirational influence on France’s 1998 World Cup triumph. He came close to topping the votes for the Ballon d’Or again two years later, when France won the European championship but he was pipped in 2000 by Luis Figo, his then Madrid colleague.
At one stage, the Madrid of the 21st century had three Ballon d’Or winners in their line-up, regularly: Zidane, Figo and the Brazilian Ronaldo. Fabio Cannavaro joined Madrid post-Zidane and Figo, after he had collected the 2006 Ballon d’Or for his work as Italy’s World Cup captain.
To look down the list of winners who are now in their late 30s or their 40s is to notice how few have determined that the logical next step of their careers is to go into elite coaching, where Zidane takes his most significant step on Saturday night when, having been promoted by Madrid from youth team coach to be the fired Rafa Benitez’s mid-season successor, he takes charge of the Primera Liga match against Deportivo La Coruna.
He can expect a huge ovation ahead of kick-off at the Bernabeu. But there will be a muted curiosity as well about whether he can manage and motivate anywhere near as well as he played, if he can raise the standards of lesser footballers, and communicate on their terms about skills he found second-nature when he was doing their job.
Many greats cannot do that. Alfredo Di Stéfano, Madrid’s first winner of the Ballon d’Or, back in 1957 and 1959, was an effective coach at times in his middle age, notably with Valencia and in his native Argentina, but at Madrid, where he had three spells on the bench, he never won the European Cup – he had won five as a Madrid player – and ended up with the nickname Alfredo II, because he as a coach had a habit of finishing second in major domestic competitions with Madrid.
According to Raymond Domenech, the former France manager who had Zidane as his captain, the transition from what Domenech calls ‘mythical’ player to manager will seem tough.
“He has the ingredients to make it work,” Domenech told Le Monde, “because to be a coach in 2016 you need an image and the clout to deal with players, the image to put in front of the media and to make players accept you. What he then has to do is make the players, the stars and the others, work together. That’s when the problems can start.”
A few superstar players have done it. Johan Cruyff, three times a Ballon d’Or, was an European Cup-winning coach at Barcelona. Franz Beckenbauer, twice chosen as Europe’s best player, won the World Cup as West Germany manager.
Michel Platini, who competes with Zidane for the status of France’s greatest ever player, was less successful when he was coach of his national team.
The same most definitely goes for Diego Maradona, who, following a surprise and often eccentric stint overseeing the Argentinian national team, was last employed at Al Wasl.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Antonio Cassano – Antonio Cassano made a couple of bold statements as Italy's Serie A returned to action after the winter break. "Nobody is better than I am," the maverick striker told reporters, albeit with a smile. He added he still cherished a hope of going, with the Italian national squad, to Euro 2016 this summer.
Dynamic derby
The possibility of an umpteenth international recall for the 33-year-old seems a long shot, but Cassano’s display in the Genoese derby, for Sampdoria against Genoa last Tuesday convinced one Italian paper, the Corriere della Sera, that he was still the country’s sole ‘world-class’ player currently at work. He had been involved in all three Samp goals in their 3-2 win.
Chequered past
In truth, the standout performances have been too infrequent this season to cause the Azzurri’s disciplinarian coach, Antonio Conte, to pause too long in considering adding to Cassano’s 39 caps. They have been spread over 11 years of ups and downs in a colourful career, the last of them as a substitute at the 2014 World Cup, where he seemed less than fully fit.
Back in trim
Fitness issues have dogged Cassano, as he acknowledged this week. The former prodigy – he made his senior debut for hometown club, Bari, aged 17 in 1999 – said: “If you want to meet your targets, you have to make sacrifices. Maybe it would have been better if I’d realised that at 20.” He says he has lost weight in the winter break, and his trim look, and hard work against Genoa should persuade Samp coach Vicenzo Montella, a former Roma team-mate of Cassano’s, to put him in the starting line-up against Juventus this weekend.
Reconciliation
The notion of Cassano even playing for Sampdoria would have seemed impossible not so long ago. He had a largely fruitful four years with the club until 2010, but fell out badly with then president Riccardo Garrone, leading to his departure for AC Milan and then, briefly, Inter Milan. His list of employers also includes Real Madrid and Roma. He has moved about a great deal, often leaving clubs on unhappy terms, amid controversy. He spent the first eight months of 2015 without a club at all, having rescinded his contract with Parma.
Capello’s coinage
His capacity to get himself into trouble once led Fabio Capello, Cassano’s coach at Roma and Madrid, to invent a special word for him, the ‘Cassanata’, denoting a hot-headed, or irresponsible action. The latest symptoms of reform will be viewed with caution by many in Italy, anticipating the next cassanata, though his flashes of brilliance will be relished.
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