Local coaches should learn from Zidane

Coach Zinadine Zidane’s resignation from Real Madrid on Thursday surprised fans, football administrators and footballers across the world. They found it hard to believe that a tactician can quit just a week after winning his third consecutive UEFA Champions League trophy.

For the two and a half years Zidane was at the helm at Santiago Bernabéu, he won nine trophies. While Zidane had a stranglehold on the continental titles of UEFA Champions League and UEFA Super Cup, and the Fifa Club World Cup, he was locked out of the domestic league, LaLiga by Barcelona.

This season Madrid finished third, 17 points adrift of table toppers Barcelona who did a domestic double by winning the Copa del Rey — the only trophy that Zidane did not win — and are likely to start the season by winning the Supercopa De España. Zidane felt that Madrid needed another voice, another method of working, to keep winning, and that voice could not be his, so he decided to let go.

Nearer home, Zidane’s act would be unheard of, for coaches would stay till pushed out or till they fall out of favour with the management and the fanbase. Perhaps local coaches can learn a thing or two from the Frenchman and understand that sometimes it is good to leave when you are top — instead of hanging on yet there is no value that you are adding to the team.