FEATURE | Zinédine Zidane’s return match for France 20 years later  | OneFootball

The return everyone in France wanted to see came true 20 years ago.

On August 17, 2005, Zinedine Zidane played his first match with the French national team since announcing his international retirement after the 2004 Euro, which saw them exit in the quarter-finals against the surprise tournament winners, Greece.

Zizou officially announced his return to the national team in early August 2005, with head coach Raymond Domenech convincing him, along with Lillian Thuram and Claude Makelélé, to come back.

Zidane returns

Two words that would forever change the fortunes of the French team struggling in the 2006 World Cup qualifying cycle, with the headline in L’Équipe simply saying “Il Revient,” which translates to “He Returns”.

The news was music to the ears of the French team, with star striker Thierry Henry saying: “What I am going to say may sound over the top, but it’s the truth. God exists, and he has returned to the France team.”

His return match was a reminder of just how valuable he was to the French national team—the scorer of two goals in their dramatic come-from-behind victory over England at Euro 2004.

Thrust immediately into the captain’s role, the Real Madrid midfielder led by example in his first match back, a friendly versus Didier Drogba and the Ivory Coast.

Zidane’s influence was evident from the beginning of that match, as the French looked like a different squad with their inspirational number 10 leading the charge. While he’d been away from the team for over a year, it was clear that his imagination, vision and skill were sorely missing from a side that was struggling to find consistency without him.

Zizou scored on his second debut, volleying in a corner at the far post to cap off a brilliant French performance as Les Bleus won 3-0 against the Africans managed by the man who had guided France to the semi-finals of the 1986 World Cup, Henri Michel.

The Zidane effect

From that point on, we saw a very different French team who were able to squeak into an automatic spot at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Their performances in qualifying with Zidane varied from strong to questionable, but with their fearless leader, they had the edge and confidence that even if they were playing poorly, they would find a way to get by. That’s something that was missing when the Real Madrid great wasn’t there.

We saw similar decent performances in the opening stage of the ’06 World Cup until a sublime Zidane showing against Spain in the round of 16 led them to a 3-1 win. Zidane followed that up with arguably the greatest World Cup performance of his career, schooling the reigning world champions Brazil in the quarter-finals, where he was virtually untouchable, showing, even though he was eight years older than in ’98 that he was still one of the most technically gifted footballers in the game.

He set up Thierry Henry for the only goal of that game as they ended the Brazilians’ World Cup title reign for a second successive time.

Zizou followed that up by scoring the only goal from the penalty spot in their 1-0 semi-final triumph over Portugal. He did it again in the final with a memorable Panenka penalty that people are still talking about today.

With that goal, Zidane became only the third in World Cup history at that time to score in two different finals, the others being Pélé, Vava and Paul Breitner. Kylian Mbappé (25) joined that exclusive group with his hat trick in the 2022 final.

That match against Italy in 2006 ultimately ended in disgrace for the Frenchman as he was red-carded for a senseless headbutt on Marco Materazzi. Les Bleus wound up losing on penalties with David Trezeguet hitting the bar, ending what would have been a storybook ending to Zidane’s career in what was his final match.

The dramatic French turnaround all began in Zizou’s first game back against the Ivory Coast.

GFFN | Joel Lefevre