Fans of Spanish soccer got an unexpected treat when the U-21 national team beat Germany 2-1 to win the European Championship final. The team’s inventive style of play captured imaginations, turning previously obscure players like Dani Olmo, Marc Roca and especially Fabian Ruiz into household names.
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Real Madrid had three players on that team: captain Jesus Vallejo, Borja Mayoral, the U-21 team’s second most-capped player ever and second all-time leading scorer, and Dani Ceballos, the team’s main creative spark, who was crowned the best player at the last U-21 European Championship in 2017. Despite the fact that their success in the tournament would indicate that they are some of the best talents of their generation, all three of them are unlikely to make Real Madrid’s first team this season.
Mayoral, who spent last season on loan at Levante, is set to be sold to La Real Sociedad. Vallejo has been on the chopping block, despite his insistence that he wants to stay. Dani Ceballos has stated that he understands “Zidane has a very clear idea of what he wants,” insinuating that the French manager has told him that he doesn’t have a place for him in the squad.
To understand why these European champions won’t have a place in Real Madrid’s first team, you have to look at the radically different development philosophies between the French Football Federation (FFF) and the Spanish federation (RFEF).
Starting in the early 2000s, the Spanish federation restructured and professionalized the youth development system. The effort bore fruit, as Spain has become a dominant force in youth soccer since then. The U-17 side has won the European Championship three times since 2007. The U-19 side has won the European Championship an astonishing seven times since 2002. The U-21 side has won five European championships, with victories in 2011, 2013 and now in 2019 (in 2017 they lost to Germany in the final). All in all, Spain have won 15 youth European Championships. The next best are France, Italy and the Netherlands with six each.
One of the Spanish federation’s main achievements was improving the quality of its coaching school. In order to be a professional coach in Spain, or in any league in Europe, you need to have an official UEFA license. The Spanish federation can grant a license after an aspiring coach attends their school, which feeds the clubs at every level in Spain with a constant pipeline of high-quality coaches trained with similar methods and a defined philosophy. This has, in turn, made the youth development programs at the country’s clubs much better. For the first time ever, Spain actually exports coaches around Europe. This was unheard of before 2004, when Rafa Benitez began his adventure at Liverpool. You just never saw an Unai Emery at a club like Arsenal, or even a Javi Gracia at Watford, let alone a Pep Guardiola leading the Premier League champions. Indeed, Mauricio Pochettino, despite being Argentine, is also a graduate of the RFEF’s coaching school.
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The RFEF philosophy is that developing a player’s ability to trap and pass is the most important thing. That positional, collective play based around possession and high pressing is the best way to achieve results. It is, in effect, the same philosophy that has dominated at FC Barcelona since Johan Cruyff revolutionized the club in the early ‘90s. The theory is based on the recognition that Spain will never consistently produce the kind of big, physically dominant players that other countries can. So instead of competing with them on that front, you just pass around them. This formula turned out to be wildly successful at the senior level, winning the Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, with a core of tiny players like Xavi, Andres Iniesta, David Silva, David Villa and Santi Cazorla.
Which brings us back to Dani Ceballos. He is not particularly fast or strong. In fact, he has average speed and a slight frame. He does possess unbelievable technique and creativity, which is why the trainers at the RFEF have always rated him so highly. He was one of the stalwarts of the side that won the U-19 Euros in 2015, he was the best player in the tournament at the 2017 U-21 Euros and he shined once again at these U-21 Euros. Luis Enrique called him up to the senior team and gave him good playing time, despite the fact that he rode the bench for his club. By any objective measure, he is one of the premier European talents of his generation, yet Zidane simply does not want him.
The key to understanding why is knowing that Zidane, despite living in Madrid since signing with the club as a player in 2001, chose not to get his coaching license at the Spanish federation, opting instead to get his in France.
The French federation’s coaching school, located at their vaunted Clairefontaine campus, has almost the polar opposite philosophy to the Spanish school. The French program relies heavily on the ideas of Aime Jacquet—the coach who guided the Zidane-led 1998 France side to World Cup glory, and then immediately resigned to become the FFF’s technical director, overseeing all matters related to coaching and youth development. His philosophy was the same as the one he imprinted with that 1998 team, which, despite Zidane’s presence, had quite a rigid and defensive style, with powerful defenders (like Marcel Desailly, Laurent Blanc and Lilian Thuram) and two extremely defensive midfielders (like Didier Deschamps and Emmanuel Petit).
According to a lengthy profile of the French footballing school in The Blizzard quarterly, “Jacquet wanted France to continue developing big, strong, athletic players. Aspiring coaches would be taught about organization and tactical discipline when they attended the classes at Clairefontaine—which were compulsory if you wanted to obtain your coaching badges. Many of today’s Ligue 1 trainers have sat in one of those Clairefontaine classrooms listening to the likes of (former France manager Raymond) Domenech stressing the importance of playing two defensive midfielders who never leave their zone.”
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“All of the coaches who have emerged since 1998 are disciples of Jacquet.” added L’Equipe chief football writer Vincent Duluc. “They have all been taught in Jacquet’s way.”
This philosophy was evident in France’s 2018 World Cup-winning side. Coach Didier Deschamps built a similar squad to the one he captained in 1998. The lone player who wasn’t big or fast (or both) was Antoine Griezmann, who played the Zidane role.
Fads in soccer tactics come and go. As recently as 2013, the France Football Federation’s physical philosophy was deemed described it perfectly in 2005: “At Real Madrid, the most important philosophy is not to win, but to increase the power of the Real Madrid name, and because of that they have created something astronomical, almost monstrous.” Figo then noted the irony, saying, “Of course this marketing machinery only works if you win. If you go three or four years without winning, the demand in China and Japan will diminish.”
The whole point of a “philosophy” is to chart a path toward winning. At Real Madrid, that varies radically depending on the manager—or on Florentino’s personal whims. He has not had a proper sporting director at the club since he fired Jorge Valdano in 2011, so he makes all of the personnel decisions himself. But, for the first time in years, he has a figure who has a bit more authority: Zidane.
Zidane got Florentino out of a major pickle when he agreed to come back to the club with 11 games still to go in what was the most disastrous season in recent memory. That undoubtedly gives Zidane more sway than in his previous stint.
So Zidane, a fellow disciple of “Jacquet’s way” doesn’t want a player like Dani Ceballos, and he doesn’t even seem to want the small and skillful Christian Eriksen, as he is instead pushing the club to sign Paul Pogba, who won the World Cup with France last year, to lead his new-look side.
(Photo: Europa Press News/Europa Press via Getty Images)