Condolences to you if you subscribed to Peacock or Apple TV just to watch Zizou the Great: The Zinedine Zidane Story, an unauthorized Australian documentary about one of the greatest French players. This documentary is so unauthorized that it has absolutely no match footage. If you watch the trailer, that is pretty much the entire film — Zidane at practice, Zidane walking to the team bus, Zidane juggling for kids, Zidane at a press conference.
Zidane’s career
Narrated by Peter Kemp, the film covers Zidane’s playing history. Since I did not start watching soccer until 1999, I didn’t know much about Zidane (aka his nickname Zizou). Born in Marseille, he helped Juventus get to 2 Champions League finals, and then he and France unexpectedly beat Brazil in the WC 1998 Final in France. The oddsmakers had expected France to come in around 13th.
The film covers some of the competition between Zidane and Ronaldo for recognition as the world’s best player. France then won Euro 2000 in Belgium, beating the Italians that he played against and with in regular season. This success made Zidane the object of Florentino Perez’s desire for Real Madrid.
Perez had already purchased Luis Figo from Barca in 2000, so Perez added Zidane, followed by Ronaldo in 2002, Beckham in 2003, and Michael Owen in 2004. Madrid’s many huge signings earned them the nickname of “The Galacticos”.
The film points out that Beckham’s signing was unnecessary as Madrid already had the 2 best midfielders in the world. What Madrid really needed was a star defender, especially after they lost Claude Makélélé in 2003. Beckham had to fill Makelele’s spot, but this led to the beginning of things going wrong for a team that could only go forward.
In Apr-2006, Zidane announced he would retire from Real Madrid. He had retired from international soccer in 2004, but in Aug-2005, he returned to the NT in order to help France qualify for WC 2006.
The film talks about Zidane’s famous head butt and send off in the WC 2006 final, followed by his dip into philanthropy by participating in 2 fund-raising games for charities in 2007-2008. Like every other footballer, Zidane had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
In Conclusion
I sort of knew that I shouldn’t waste my time on this film. Peacock seems to have procured a bunch of soccer content that is more than 10 years old, and I haven’t enjoyed any of it. This film is in std def (standard definition), so on a big screen TV it is just plain blurry. But the real kicker is that there is no game footage. I was hoping to see Zidane in action in a game, making some fantastic play, giving me some visual evidence of what made him so great. But no dice.
Also note, I could find no information about Writer-Director Scott Foster, the production companies, the narrator, or a definitive release date. I found sites that said the film was from 2008, 2009, 2010, or 2012. I decided that 2009 is probably the most accurate, given that the coverage of Zidane ends at 2008, and there is no mention of the start of his coaching career.
While I enjoyed the summary of some of Real Madrid’s history, most viewers would be better off reading Zidane’s wikipedia page.
One thing that caught my eye was the mention of Claude Makélélé and his value to Real Madrid, which the club apparently did not care to recognize. When watching WC 2006, I thought Makelele was the best player on the pitch and was keeping France in all the games through outrageous effort. I’ve always wondered why he never seemed to get much credit. I had wondered why no one has made a film about him, but after doing a little research, I see that he probably has a big #MeToo problem. Oh well.
3 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 3
Resources:
- Released: 2009 (Australia)
- aka Zinedine Zidane: Zizou the Great
- 52 mins
- I watched this on Peacock
- IMDB
- Writer/Director: Scott Foster
- Stars: Zinedine Zidane
- Watch the Trailer
