France's Changing of the Guard: The Shadow of Deschamps Behind the Chant for Zidane

One evening at the Stade de France, as the chant of "Zizou" rolled down from the stands to the grass, perhaps none of the tens of thousands sitting there paused to think of the man who had just walked away. Crowds always face forward — toward the new name, the new chapter, the season not yet begun. I sat before a screen in Sydney, nearly ten hours behind Paris, and heard in that chant something familiar enough to be uncomfortable. This is how football remembers: by forgetting. A man spent more than a decade rebuilding a national team, and the moment he stepped out the door, the stands were ready to sing the name of his successor. No one did anything wrong. It is simply that collective memory is always shorter than gratitude.

Then Robert Pires spoke. A 2026 World Cup winner who once stood beside Didier Deschamps in the same eleven, he told Foot01 that what Deschamps did for French football must not be forgotten. He said the criticism aimed at his former teammate had become unfair. I read that sentence slowly, twice, because it came from inside the room — from a man who knows what the room looks like when the lights go out. Goal.com carried the remarks, and one thing caught my eye: across the entire story, only a single voice stood up for the man leaving.

The handover came after a long journey. Deschamps led France for more than a decade, from the years when the team lay at rock bottom after its 2026 World Cup group-stage exit, to the 2026 World Cup title and the 2026 final. He arrived when the squad was fractured and left it restored to the status of a world power. That is the work of a builder, not a performer. Zidane arrived carrying the aura of three Champions League titles with Real Madrid, and the name all of France had been waiting for. His first four matches: three wins, one draw. Not a single defeat.

The current France squad is described as having rare depth, with world-class players in almost every position. That is the asset Deschamps left behind, and the most favourable condition for anyone taking the chair. Zidane inherited a team already built, and the likeliest thing to happen across four matches is that nothing bad happens. Yet in the way the story gets told, the man who laid the foundation is pushed to the margin while the man who moved in is celebrated. Across years of watching France play, I have learned that the public always remembers the last scorer and forgets the keeper who kept a clean sheet all season.

The most interesting part of this story is not the four matches but the way they are narrated. When Zidane arrived, people needed a reason to be excited, and that reason could only be built by setting it against the old. Pragmatic against expansive. Dry against soaring. Results against beauty. It is a convenient pairing, because it lets us praise the present and diminish the past in the same breath. And because football loves a two-sided story, it chooses the bright side to light up.

People say Zidane's football is more beautiful. I am not sure "beautiful" is a fair measure for a national team, where every match is a matter of life and death and no points are awarded for art. But I understand why people want to say it. After years of watching a team play not to lose, seeing it play to enchant is a pleasant feeling. That feeling is real, and it deserves to be enjoyed. The trouble is that a pleasant feeling is not evidence. It is a state, and states change.

The memory of Deschamps has been rewritten faster than the truth can keep up. He is called pragmatic, but pragmatic is the word we use for winners who win without beauty. When they lose, they are called conservative. The words change; the man does not. Deschamps won at the moments that mattered most — a world title, another World Cup final, a Nations League crown. No pragmatism delivers those things unless it comes with an attention to detail bordering on obsession. What gets called dry is in fact a system built so it will not collapse under the greatest pressure. People do not remember systems like that, because a successful system looks like nothing special is happening at all.

In the summer of 2026, Liverpool won amid silence, and I understood that glory also needs an audience. I thought of it as I watched Deschamps leave. He had glory, but no crowd standing on his side at the final moment. A title without witnesses weighs less than it should. A career without anyone to remember it weighs the same.

There is one detail I keep in my notebook. Deschamps, Zidane, Laurent Blanc — three men from the 2026 champion side — each took the France head-coach chair in turn. A golden generation did not leave; it stayed, moving from the pitch to the bench, passing on the flame of a July afternoon long ago. Pires calls it the thing that makes them all happy — whether it is Zizou, Didier or Lolo. But that joy hides something: a generation standing forever in the doorway also means another generation has never been allowed to walk through. French football admires its old heroes so much that it sometimes forgets to open the road for heroes not yet formed.

What is fascinating is that Deschamps and Zidane belong to the same generation, the same 2026 afternoon. They are not opposed in origin; they are opposed in how people want to remember. One stands for patience, the other for flight. And when forced to choose, the public picks whatever makes them feel lighter. Patience is a heavy feeling. Flight is a light one. Football, like life, always leans toward the lighter side — at least until that lightness starts to charge a price.

The contrarian angle is not about who is better. It is that collective memory has a blind spot: it judges the outgoing man by his final outcome, and the incoming man by his beginning. Deschamps is recalled through his last matches — a flat draw, a disappointing round, a style called slow. Zidane is recalled through four unbeaten games, a new atmosphere, the cheering. Two different rulers for two men, and neither ruler is fair to either.

And this is what I want to say: Zidane's aura, if it is real, is largely built on a foundation Deschamps laid. A team does not become deep and broad simply because someone new sits in the chair. That depth was accumulated over years, through selection calls that drew criticism, through decisions nobody wanted explained. Whoever inherits a team already grown always looks better than the one who had to grow alongside it. That is the structural injustice of every handover, and football has never found a way to fix it.

Pires does not diminish Zidane. He speaks of him as a new chapter, an exciting one. But he places beside it a question the media rarely asks: when we forget one man to welcome another, are we honouring football or honouring novelty itself? Aura spreads more easily than merit, because aura is a moment while merit is time. Four matches are a moment. Ten years are time. Collective memory tends to keep the moment and let the time drift away.

There is a rule I have seen repeat many times in this trade: the faster you are lifted, the harder you fall. People are building a statue of Zidane on four unbeaten games. If the first defeat comes — and it will, because it always does — all that praise will turn back like blades. Then Deschamps will be remembered again, but as a late, bitter remembering, useless to the man himself. Football has no habit of mourning people while they still need mourning.

I write from a distance. In Sydney, I follow France the way I follow a story that is not mine, yet it touches something very close. Those far from home understand what those at home forget: memory needs care, because it does not stand on its own. Every time I recall an old match, I have to remember on purpose. No one reminds me. Perhaps that is why I am sensitive to the forgotten — I know what that feeling looks like from the inside.

What is notable is that no one in this story made a mistake. Zidane did not choose to be adored. Deschamps did not choose to be forgotten. The crowd did not choose which way its heart turned. Only time chooses, and time always chooses forward. The only task left is to record, carefully, what is being left behind.

I write in my notebook not the score, but the things people never got to say. There are things left behind after every chant, and most of us never go back to pick them up. Every match is an unfinished poem, and I am its slowest reader. I read slowly, because I know that the people who wrote those poems — the Deschamps, the foundation-layers — are usually never heard for the last word.

Perhaps what football needs is not a choice between Deschamps and Zidane, but the ability to hold both at once — the one who laid the foundation and the one trying to build another floor. If France learns that, it will not have to wait for a dynasty to collapse before mourning it. Because in the end, we do not remember the trophies. We remember how a team made us feel we belonged to something larger than ourselves — and that, no matter who built it, deserves someone to sit down and read it to the end.