Yesterday Zinedine Zidou Zidane announced he will retire after the upcoming World Cup
This will be a MAJOR loss to football as Zinedine belonged to the 5 best ever footballers to grace this planet. And as Johan Cruijff put it once, he was the last of the real classic ‘number 10’-playmakers (player right behind the two forwards, who doesn’t score many goals himself, but provides numerous for others).
He is one of the few players to have won everything that a soccer player can wish for:
French title
Serie A Scudetto
Spanish League title
Champion’s League
UEFA cup (am not sure about this one)
World cup for clubs
European Championship
World Championship
FIFA world player of the year
UEFA player of the year
most expensive transfer ever
-two goals in the world cup final
-spectacular volley goal in the final of the Champion’s League (remember that one???;))
wat else can one wish for???
I think -and many other experts in the field do too- that he is up there in the same league as the very best players ever:
Pele
Cruijff
Maradonna
Zidane
Beckenbauer
players, who have won everything, and because of whom their team won everything
perhaps this last part can’t be even said about Ronaldinho: Both Brazil and Barcelona would still be dominating even without Ronaldinho.
okay just checked the news out. He definately is retirning from all forms of football :(
but then again, he chose to bow out with respect rather than being sold to a mediocre club with modest performances as there is no doubt his performances were on a decline since a while.
I would disagree here. Barcelona are no where as dominating without Ronaldinho as they are with him. They hardly won anything without him and with Etoo and Larson getting loads of creative services through him, they score goals for fun. I have seen Barca struggling to break teams down when Ronnie isnt playing.
But yes that statement is cent percent true regarding Zidane.
yesterday was probably the last match ever we could see Yezide Zinedine Zizou -The grandmaster- Zidane in action.
It's an end of an era and a great loss to football. In a world where glamour and money is everything that counts, football will lose a player who has always been himself and only lived for the football, nothing besides it. Zidane's retirement also marks the retirement of the classical 4-4-2 system with a diamond in midfield. He was the last recognized number 10 "Spielmacher". Of course you got players like Kaka, Riquelme who try to take on that role, but they are more from the flanks -at times even supporting striker-, but none is the real Playmaker such as Zidane: he had made it an artform.
. His life in football gets longer by each day.