Zidane and the new order at Clairefontaine: discipline first, football later

In the stands of Stade Bollaert-Delelis, among thousands of spectators at the Trophée des Champions, a man sat a little lower than the rail, a notebook in his hand. Zinedine Zidane did not go down to the technical area, did not sit in a glass cabin with a big screen. He chose a seat from which the eye can see only half the pitch — precisely the half a full-back has to turn his body to defend. That small detail says more than an unveiling press conference.

I have sat in many stands like that one. In 2026 I began writing for a football newspaper while working as a correspondent in Madrid; since then, eight Olympic Games, eight World Cups, a few editions of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. The trade taught me that a new coach rarely announces his philosophy in words. He chooses a seat, chooses people, chooses the order of announcements. And at Clairefontaine, Zidane's first weeks are a sequence of exactly those choices: journalists and photographers barred from the arrival zone, an expanded coaching staff, a replaced specialist medical figure, and a larger-than-usual squad list in preparation.

The label "no more catwalks" that the press has attached to this period sounds like a fashion slogan turned inside out. Read closely, it is a governance document.

Context: fourteen years leave a long shadow

To understand why these administrative moves deserve analysis, they have to be set beside the shadow Didier Deschamps left behind. Fourteen years. A tenure so long it became the default: the French grew used to a pragmatic, tight-lipped national team built around major tournaments, where everything is measured by how far you go. RMC Sport described Deschamps' methods as "traditional" things in need of dusting off.

What needs dusting off sits on a different layer than tactics. Across the whole source base I have — the Goal.com piece drawing on RMC Sport — there is not a single line about a formation, a pressing scheme, or how France will play. No xG, no PPDA, no projected eleven. That is the first thing I want to state plainly, because plenty of commentary will fill that gap with speculation.

Clairefontaine is the national training base of French football, and for more than two decades it has been both a technical hub and a stage. The arrival zone had become a runway. Cameras lined the entrance, players stepped out of the bus in bespoke outfits, and the evening bulletin carried a full segment on luggage before a single sentence on the defensive block. It was a small media economy, running on the most sellable thing: personal image.

Zidane cut exactly that current. Reporters and photographers are not admitted to the arrival zone. The accompanying message is clear: the priority is pitch preparation, total concentration, and football performance ahead of personal appearance. Among the named personnel, Jules Koundé is the figure tied to the squad's fashion culture — a detail I will return to later, because it matters more than it looks.

Three layers of intervention, three levels of risk

Reading the moves closely, I see three distinct layers, with very different risk profiles.

The first layer is symbolic — the cheapest, fastest and loudest. Banning cameras at the bus door requires no training session. It requires a memo. But its value lies elsewhere: it tests whether the dressing room complies, and it broadcasts that authority has changed hands. A rule that takes effect for twenty-four hours but gets discussed for two weeks is usually a rule about power, not about football.

The second layer is performance, and this is where the real professional content sits. The technical staff has been expanded relative to the Deschamps era. David Bettoni takes the assistant role — for Zidane, a long-standing lieutenant and the only continuity anchor in what should have been a thoroughly disruptive rebuild. Stéphane Plancque joins as an observer. Arthur Hochedé is added as a dedicated physical trainer. And Serge Isidro replaces Marc Retali as the podiatrist.

A podiatrist is rarely a glamorous figure. But at elite level, foot injuries are the quiet kind that erode a calendar: they do not generate headlines the way knees or hamstrings do, yet they can cost a player six weeks before anyone asks a question. Replacing the man in that post, alongside adding a physical specialist, suggests the new staff is betting on availability first. High intensity, a dense fixture list, and a national team with only a few training windows a year — those three together turn the medical department into a tactical department.

I do not want to push further than that. Some analyses will argue that adding a fitness coach means France will press high. That is inference. Having a fitness coach says nothing about the height of the defensive line or the pressing trigger. A staffing structure tells you the level of investment, not the idea of play. To learn the idea, you wait for the first match.

One more detail belongs to this layer: a technical seminar in mid-August, before the squad convenes. At club level that is routine. At national-team level, where players arrive from four corners and meet only a few times a year, a seminar of that length is rare. It takes time from men preparing for their club seasons. It also shows a new staff wanting to lay foundations before any results pressure exists — a fairly intelligent use of time.

The third layer is selection. The squad list is due on Friday at six in the evening, with an expanded list and fresh faces expected. This is the quietest layer with the longest consequences. Who is called, who is left out, and how many names come from Ligue 1 — those three questions draw the boundaries of the whole tenure.

Zidane attending a club fixture at Bollaert-Delelis in person belongs to this layer. A national coach can watch everything on video. Sitting in the stands, at a diagonal angle, gives him a different kind of information: off-ball movement rhythms, reactions to losing the ball, the way a player turns when nobody is watching. It is also a small political gesture toward domestic clubs.

And what is being called a "new order" is in fact the product of a thousand repeated training sessions — or it is nothing at all. In week one, none of it exists yet.

The blind spot is confusing symbol with durability

The easiest mistake to make with this story is to confuse symbol with durability. Banning cameras is easy. Maintaining a standard inside a dressing room for eighteen months is hard. The two do not automatically travel together.

First, the media ban manufactures the very story it wants to suppress. By closing the arrival zone, the staff turns the closing of the arrival zone into news. I have seen this in many places: you do not control a story by pulling the lens away, you simply relocate it to another page. If the first results are poor, this very reticence will be re-read as evidence of a team hiding something.

Second, be careful with the phrase "no more catwalks" itself. It sits inside quotation marks in the headline, which means it may be an editorial formulation rather than a verbatim Zidane quote. Using Jules Koundé as the example of fashion culture may likewise be an editorial choice to make the story more accessible. I am not saying it is wrong — Koundé genuinely stands out in that area — but it places a player at the centre of a message he did not deliver.

Third, and this is what I weigh most: this power model puts nearly the entire load on one man. The restructuring list, the disciplinary signal, the media attention, the credibility of the staff — all of it flows through Zidane's image. Bettoni, Hochedé and Isidro soften that risk, but they were appointed by him and are tied to him. The year 2026 taught me that a team stands on a system, not on a line-up. So does a national team. If the structure cannot hold when its head goes quiet, it is borrowing authority rather than building it.

Finally, a reverse reading. After fourteen years of stability, France carries a risk running the opposite way to the usual worry. The common fear is that disruption creates chaos. But a group raised on stability and few experiments may find it harder to be told to change its daily habits. Cultural barriers are not dismantled by words, but by the first match. And the first match has not arrived.

What to watch over the next two months

The Friday six o'clock list is the first marker — I will count the new faces and the domestically based players, because that is the measurable part of the "expanded list" promise. The first two or three matches are the second marker, and this time I will look at process data rather than scorelines: pressing actions in the first thirty seconds after losing possession, soft-tissue injuries in open training, and the number of players withdrawn before the sixtieth minute. Those three indicators show whether the new fitness department is working or merely existing.

The third marker is not on the pitch. It is the tone of the French press in the week after the first defeat — if there is one. Discipline is always praised while you are winning. Once you stop winning, the same move gets called something else: over-control. I know this from following many national-team cycles, and it is a story of football in general, not of France alone.

A national team will not win because of a press ban. But if that ban is the first sign of a football culture rearranging its priorities, then what deserves watching is not whether it is reasonable, but whether it still holds three months from now. Power in football is not measured by announcements. It is measured by how many people comply when nobody is reminding them.