Zinedine Zidane, coach of the France national team, is preparing this Friday evening to unveil his first squad with Les Bleus, in preparation for playing four matches in the UEFA Nations League.
Foot Mercato reported that the French coach used long weeks of work to monitor players meticulously, following a particular approach.
Zidane didn't overhaul the method of building an initial squad. His staff drew up a first list of 55 players, five names for each position, but they were also keen to ramp up the tracking of players who fly under the media radar.
To pull this off, the coaching staff split the roles between them, according to L'Équipe. Fabien Barthez took on the goalkeepers, turning up in Toulouse for example, while players in other positions got a double, and sometimes even triple, reading.
David Bettoni, Zidane's loyal assistant, brought his coaching experience to the table. Stéphane Blanc leaned more towards monitoring and observation, his main specialism, and the two men form a highly complementary duo, brought together by close acquaintance after six years working together at Real Madrid.
Blanc's watch didn't stop at French players. His work also let him scout Les Bleus' upcoming opponents, with Turkey, Belgium and Italy on the Nations League schedule.
The staff then set up a regular system for tracking the targeted players. Zidane and his assistants would meet every two weeks to weigh up the various observations and decide which players needed special attention.
According to the French newspaper, Adrien Truffert was watched twice from the stands during his appearances with Bournemouth, while Lucas Da Cunha, who made a striking start to the season with Como, also caught the eye.
Fred Tabet, the new video analyst, tracked players regularly too. Bettoni, Zidane's first assistant, took on Germany and Italy in particular, while Blanc focused on France and a number of other competitions, and Tabet mainly followed England and Spain.
This setup also aims to stop them judging a player on a single impression alone. Every three months, the monitoring zones rotate, so different members of the coaching staff take on the observation of the players in the frame for the national team during the season.
Multiple readings feed into the final call. As for Zidane himself, he hasn't travelled much so far, spotted only at the Bollaert stadium during the French Super Cup between Lens and Paris Saint-Germain. According to the French newspaper, his status as a global icon makes organising his trips tricky at times. Now it's a case of waiting for the fruit of this work through the first squad of the Zidane era, which will reveal which of the new faces have booked a place in the plans of the 1998 world champion.
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