Aimé Jacquet

Um, I think there is a, a competition which is absolutely good, and uh, and is, uh, absolutely fantastic for Zidane to have the, uh, the choice that he has.

Uh, but it was again, the same with me, uh, Laurent Blanc, Marcel Desailly, Lilian Thuram at the time, that the Aimé Jacquet, same name, uh, had the chance to choose.

And uh, that's what it is.

But, um, I think Kulacura and Upamecano as the first choice, and uh, and um, Jacquet is the big surprise, but he would have to be a little bit patient.

Lost to the, to the Czech, uh, on penalties as well.

Not that Zidane was great, but this was a team that, a bit like what then we would see two years later at the World Cup, was, was built around how strong defensively they were and how well organized, and that was very much Aimé Jacquet's idea.

2000 is a little bit different because they got to a level, like Coxie was saying earlier, of outstanding level attacking-wise too.

But so Zidane was a little bit the, the kind of the The, the, the jewel in what was a very, very kind of robust team that was just made to defend and be very strong and hard to play against more than anything else.

It's not gonna be great.

A few of the friendlies before had been really laborious, so they didn't really look that ready, and I think there was a lot of people just waiting for them to fail to even go more after them.

Yeah, I mean, there was a headline or, uh, a comment in a L'Equipe article that said something like, "Expecting Aimé Jacquet to lead this team to victory is like expecting to climb Everest in a pair of espadrilles."

Yeah, [laughs] I remember that.

Uh, but, uh, that was, that was awful.

But, um, um, m- let's say that for the record, um, uh, Zinedine Zidane is the, uh, uh, the, the, the only coach who, uh, won his first game getting into that job since Aimé Jacquet in '94.

And I'm sorry, Gab, uh, it was against Italy away from home in Naples.

Uh, we, we won 1-0.