Zidane Flies Solo: The Frenchman Counting His Players' Every Step

That morning I counted forty-two shots and seven goals, across ten consecutive Tuesday mornings, from a spot thirty-five meters from the goal. The shooter wore the number seven, was not famous, and never appeared in any news bulletin. Nobody asked me to count. Nobody paid me to sit there. I counted because I believe the pitch never lies, only the spectator tells the truth. Years later, reading a short line from France, I suddenly remembered those mornings. The line said that the new France manager, Zinedine Zidane, would personally fly out to watch his players perform abroad, instead of sending assistants like his predecessor. One sentence. Two lines. But hidden inside was an entire philosophy about how one counts the steps of the people one trusts. At twenty-two I counted every ceremonial meter; at thirty-one I understood that was a promise. To understand this line, you need a few facts around it. The France national team had just closed one of the longest coaching dynasties in modern football. Didier Deschamps led Les Bleus for more than a decade, won the 2026 World Cup, reached the 2026 World Cup final, and built a machine so smooth that people almost forgot that behind every match lay a vast player-monitoring system stretching across Europe and beyond. Within that system, Deschamps delegated the tracking of overseas players to two trusted assistants: Guy Stéphan and Franck Raviot. They were the ones who flew, who sat in the stands, who took notes, who filed dense reports read only by the coaching staff. Deschamps sat at the center, synthesized everything, and made decisions. That was a classic hierarchical model, efficient, and it saved the leader's time. Zidane, according to information from L'Équipe aggregated by Goal.com, intends to do it differently. He wants to go himself, as much as possible, to keep direct contact with his players. A small change in description, but a large one in meaning. Because between sending someone and going yourself there is a gap that no scoreboard can measure. This line must be placed beside the wider picture of France right now. They lead their UEFA Nations League group. After four matches they have ten points, with three wins and one draw. They are three points clear of second-placed Italy and four ahead of third-placed Belgium. That is a comfortable position, but not a safe one. A quarter-final place is not yet mathematically assured. One slip, and that fragile three-point gap can be erased in an instant. Zidane is said to be pleased with his first steps, and ahead of him lies a full month to prepare, a rare pause in the dense calendar of international football. It is precisely within such a pause that a coach's working method becomes clearest. When matches are not being played, when there is no scoreboard pressure, what remains is organization, observation, and the building of trust. And that is when the line about Zidane's flights becomes noteworthy. A national-team coach having to track players performing abroad is a specific problem of modern European football. France produces a huge amount of talent, and most of them earn their living overseas. They play in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and increasingly in leagues farther away geographically but closer financially. That means a France manager, whether he likes it or not, must manage a collective scattered across the map of Europe. In the old model, the assistants were the ones who traveled. They divided the territories, each handling a group of players, a region, a league. They sent reports back. They recorded minutes, form, fitness, psychology. Deschamps read, synthesized, and decided on call-ups. That was an organized, disciplined process that had proven effective over years. One could call it an observation machine, where each part did exactly its job. But there is one thing that process could not replace: the presence of the leader himself. When a player looks up into the stands and sees the head coach of the national team sitting there, for him, at an ordinary club match, the message received is entirely different from knowing that some assistant is taking notes somewhere. Presence is a form of wordless message, and in football, wordless messages often travel farther than speeches. I once witnessed this from the opposite side. Years ago, during mornings at a training ground, I watched a young player linger after practice to finish. No spectators, no cameras, no one paying attention. The only thing making him repeat that motion was not money, not a contract, but the feeling that someone was watching. The training ground is a stage without an audience, where the supporting role rehearses to become the lead. And when someone at the highest position takes the time to come and watch, that invisible stage suddenly has someone in the front row. That is why I think Zidane's decision to fly himself, if carried out as described, means more than a schedule change. It is a statement about how he wants to shape his relationship with his players. In the early phase of a reign, when there are not yet many matches to build credibility, gestures like this are precisely how foundations are laid. But one thing must be made clear. The entire story lies in the method of managing people. On-pitch style does not appear in the data. The available information mentions no change to the playing system, the formation, or the approach. Not a single line speaks of pressing, of possession, of expected goals, of passes per defensive action. Anyone trying to infer tactics from this line is going far beyond the facts. What stands out is how Zidane chooses to contrast with his predecessor. L'Équipe describes him as working in a completely different way. In the early phase of any reign, creating a difference from the one before is a natural move. A successor needs to assert his own mark, to show that this is his time. And the fastest way to do that is to change deeply ingrained habits, even good ones. Shifting from delegating to assistants to doing it himself is a deliberate reversal. It does not necessarily mean the old model was wrong. It simply means the new man wants to personally hold a part of the work his predecessor handed away. In management, a leader directly joining a certain stage is often a way to control the quality of information, to feel for himself instead of reading reports. Reports can be accurate, but they never convey feeling. And in football, feeling is sometimes more important than numbers. I have a habit of looking at data tables before watching footage. That is how I was taught, and it saves me time. But I have also learned that some things only appear when you sit there in person. How a player moves without the ball, how he reacts after losing it, what he says to teammates while waiting for a free kick. Those details are in no statistical table. They exist only in the eye of the person sitting there. At national-team level, contact time between coach and player is extremely limited. A year has a few windows, each lasting a few days to more than a week. In that brief time, ideas must be conveyed, understanding built, and a collective formed from individuals coming from many different clubs. For that reason, every opportunity for contact outside official windows becomes precious. A coach's flights to club stadiums are a way of extending that contact time, even if only one-way. There is a psychological aspect rarely discussed. When a player knows the national-team head coach will be at his match, he enters the game in a different state. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. Some play explosively, some shrink. And a coach in the stands, if perceptive, learns more about his player than an ordinary match reveals. How a player reacts to attention is a fact about character, and character cannot be bought with transfer money. The transfer market is where people call love by a number in euros. But at national-team level, money is not the main driver. A player wears the national shirt for pride, for honor, for childhood memory. And those motives are nourished only by relationships. A coach who understands this will invest in relationships, not just tactics. Here I want to pause at a counter-current view. There is another reading of this line, one reporters rarely touch. First, remember that this is information based on a single source, describing an intention rather than an action that has occurred. L'Équipe is a top-tier source for French football, but an intention formed internally is not a confirmed event. There is no confirmation from the federation, no statement from Zidane himself. It is a plan, and plans can change. Second, going oneself has a cost. Every flight is time not spent analyzing footage, not spent preparing for opponents, not spent with family. A coach flying across Europe to watch his players will have less time for other things. And in a precious month of preparation before an important window, allocating time is a problem with no perfect solution. Third, and this I consider most important, going oneself is not automatically better than delegating. Deschamps' model was not a lazy model. It was a model trusting the staff, delegation, and specialization. Assistants like Stéphan and Raviot were not idle men; they were specialists with specific tasks. A leader doing their work can be read as an assertion of power, or as a lack of trust, depending on the view. If Zidane truly works in a completely different way, what is worth discussing is how the roles of the old assistants will be redefined. A change in method always brings adjustments in people. And those adjustments, however small, can create internal friction. In a collective, redistributing authority is usually more sensitive than outsiders imagine. Looking at the group, France sit in a favorable but not invulnerable position. Ten points from four matches is a good start. Three wins and a draw, unbeaten, is a solid foundation for any new reign. But football does not live on the past. The three-point gap with Italy is the most fragile margin, and a defeat against that very opponent could reverse the situation. Belgium in third is also not an opponent to be taken lightly. This creates an interesting pressure for Zidane. He has a grace period, a honeymoon that good results provide. During that time, changes in method are accepted more easily. But every honeymoon ends. If results dip, those very changes become the object of scrutiny. People will ask whether flying himself is a waste of time, whether breaking old habits is an unnecessary risk. The beat keeper must not fall asleep amid the cheering. That is what I have learned over years of observation. When everything is going well, that is exactly when to prepare for when everything turns bad. And a wise coach will use the good times to build what is needed for the hard times. A full month is not a month of rest; it is a month to lay the foundation for the decisive matches. In football history, there have been coaches famous for personally watching players. Marcelo Bielsa is known for an obsessive thoroughness, able to watch hundreds of matches and note every small detail. Jürgen Klinsmann, during his time leading the United States, also made transatlantic trips to track players performing in Europe. Personal observation is not a new invention, but it has always been a choice demanding commitment of time and effort. What is different about Zidane is his stature. He is one of the greatest players in history, and now the coach of the national team he once led to the summit as a player. His presence carries a special weight. When Zidane comes to watch a match, it is not merely a coach watching a player. It is a legend watching a potential heir. That message carries a weight few other coaches can create. But that very stature also raises a question. Might the presence of a legend place too much pressure on a player? Might a young player, knowing Zidane is in the stands, play below his ability, or try too hard to impress? That is a kind of pressure only time can answer. And if that pressure makes a player underperform, the coach's trip backfires. To fully understand the challenge Zidane faces, look at the map of French football talent. This is a country producing more world-class players than any other, and most of them play abroad. A typical France squad can include players from top clubs in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and farther leagues. This means a France manager must monitor a network of players spread across the continent. That monitoring is not only about whether a player is playing well. It is also tracking fitness, psychology, how they settle at their club, signs of fatigue or injury. A national-team coach, to some degree, must play the role of a dispersed HR manager, who must grasp the situation of dozens of people in dozens of different places. This is why assistants become important. They extend the coach's reach, allowing him to be in many places at once. But when the coach decides to go himself, he chooses to reduce the number of locations to increase the quality of each presence. It is a trade-off, and no choice is perfect. One trip by the head coach himself may leave a deeper impression than ten assistant reports, but it also means ten other locations have no one watching. At a deeper level, this story reflects a feature of the modern football ecosystem: the flow of information from local sources to global platforms. A French newspaper reports, an international website aggregates, and within hours the information is everywhere. The propagation is so fast that people often forget that behind each line lies a complex process of collection and verification, with anonymous sources and incomplete confirmations. For someone in the observation profession like me, this reminds me of the importance of distinguishing information from truth. Information is what gets spread. Truth is what gets confirmed on the pitch. And between the two there is a gap the reader must be aware of. The pitch is the final referee; if the pitch has not confirmed it, the story remains open. There is one thing I always keep in mind in my work: I write not to be read, but so that the pitch has a witness. What happens on the field, however small, needs to be recorded, because football's memory is a memory of details. A line about a coach deciding to fly out to watch his players may at first seem trivial. But placed in the flow of history, it may be the first sign of a new way of working, a new way of seeing the relationship between the one who leads and the one who is led. What I care about is not whether Zidane flies. What I care about is whether that way of working creates a France team that is more united, understands each other better, and plays for each other more. Because in the end, football is a team sport, and a team is only strong when each individual feels seen. A player plays best when he believes the one leading him truly understands him, not only through numbers in a report, but through what that person witnessed with his own eyes. I remember a night in Kazan, when a man knelt to kiss the pitch and told me that sixteen years had passed before a night like this. That moment is in no scoreboard. It exists only because someone was there, watching with his own eyes. Kazan taught me that tears do not belong to the loser, but to the one who remains. And in every new reign of a national team, there are always those who remain, those waiting for a chance, those whose stories are only told if someone takes the trouble to come and look. Zidane, with his decision to fly himself, seems to be choosing to become the one who comes and looks. It is a costly choice in time, but it may be worth it in trust. In football, trust is the hardest thing to build and the easiest to lose. A coach can draw perfect tactical drills, but if the players do not trust each other, do not trust him, everything collapses in an instant. What happens next? That is the question I always ask at the end of every story. For Zidane and France, the answer lies in the next window. That is when we will know whether the flights actually take place, whether the new method makes a difference, and whether France hold on to the lead. If Zidane appears in the stands of European stadiums, the story will be reinforced. If he does not, it will become a promise unkept. I will watch. Not to find the winner, but to find the people at the edge of the pitch, whose stories are often overlooked. Because in every new reign, there are always the chosen and the left behind. And it is the left behind who tell us the truth about their era. Zidane's France will be judged not only by wins on the scoreboard, but by what remains after the final whistle, when those who remain step out of the light and return to themselves.