[Saba Sports News] According to multiple media outlets, French football legend Zinedine Zidane will succeed Didier Deschamps as the new head coach of the French national team. In a recent report, L’Équipe states that the entire recruitment process for Zidane has been kept strictly confidential. The search for the new national team manager was driven by an obsessive focus on secrecy. Only FFF president Philippe Diallo and general manager Jean-François Villotte took part in the operation. Everyone had to keep up appearances right up until the final moment. For weeks, staff inside the French Football Federation were forbidden from naming Zidane as Deschamps’ successor, after Deschamps stepped down following a 14-year spell in charge of Les Bleus. It can now be confirmed that Zidane and the FFF have reached a gentleman’s agreement in substance: he will be the next head coach of France. This decision was not hastily finalised in recent weeks; the federation internally settled on the plan as early as last year. There have been no hesitations or reversals ever since, and every stage has moved forward as scheduled.
Even though recruiting the former Juventus and Real Madrid midfield maestro seemed inevitable, and media outlets have flooded coverage of his impending arrival, secrecy was taken to an exaggerated extreme. During the final meeting held to hammer out the logistics ahead of Zidane’s official announcement, those present even referred to the successful candidate anonymously.