And just like that, he’s gone.
Only days ago Zinedine Zidane was basking in the glory of becoming the first coach in history to win three consecutive Champions League titles with Real Madrid and staking a claim as one of the great coaches in history.
On Thursday, he said he was quitting the Spanish giants in an announcement that seemed to have even taken the club’s president Florentino Perez by surprise.
It appears the 45-year-old Frenchman has decided that it won’t ever get better than this for him at the famously demanding 13-time European champions.
“I don’t see myself continuing to win this year and I am a winner, I don’t like to lose,” said Zidane, who was under contract with Real until 2020.
The Frenchman specialises in dramatic departures – in the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin, his final appearance as a player, was cut short when he was sent off for headbutting the Italian defender Marco Materazzi. Zidane said he had insulted his family.
The French stalwart had announced before the World Cup that he would retire from the game, but no one quite saw that exit coming, as he walked away from the beautiful game under ugly circumstances. It’s one of those incidents that fans from around the world can never forget.
While not quite as explosive as that night in Germany, Zidane’s exit from Real Madrid sure comes as bolt from the blue, with Spanish newspaper Marca reporting the players expected to hear a decision on his renewal and not resignation.
The 3-1 victory over Liverpool in Kiev on Saturday was the pinnacle of a coaching career after his reign as a player with Real Madrid which peaked when he scored the winning goal in the 2002 Champions League final against Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow.
Zidane was considered one of the all-time greats as a player, his mixture of sublime skill wrapped up in a muscular package driving France to victory in the 1998 World Cup on home soil.
Affectionately known as “Zizou” in France, he was World Player of the Year three times, in 1998, 2000 and 2003 in a career that started at Cannes, moved onto Bordeaux before he moved into the big league with Juventus, staying five years, before joining Real in 2001.
Incredibly, his record-breaking achievement in Kiev came less than three full seasons in charge after he was promoted from his position as coach of Real’s youth team.
It was only in January 2016 that he took charge of the full Real team.
“You can’t help but admire what he has done,” France manager Didier Deschamps, who won the World Cup as a player alongside Zidane in 1998, told France’s TF1 after the Kiev triumph.
“Already as a player he was an extraordinary player. He’s had a second life as a coach and he is already an extraordinary coach. Achieving three Champions League wins is fabulous.”
Madrid sports daily AS said after the final that Zidane was “the architect of this glorious and possibly unrepeatable era”.
It is widely expected that Zidane will one day manage France himself. He has never made a secret of his ambition to do so and speculation will now grow that he will succeed Deschamps after this year’s World Cup finals.
Zidane has now won nine trophies since replacing Rafael Benitez in the Santiago Bernabeu dugout in January 2016.
It is a remarkable record, all the more so for a man who before the Kiev final admitted to not being the best tactician.
“I am not the best coach tactically, but I have other things,” he said ahead of the final.
“I know very well how the dressing room and a player’s head works, and that for me is very important.”
(With AFP inputs)