Mexico City / 14.07.2022 19:20:56
With the ball at his feet, he’s certainly one of the best footballers in history, but he’s definitely not the most charismatic guy. Someone who was able to verify it in his own flesh is Javier Alarconwho recalled how difficult it was to work with Zinedine Zidane on Televisasince the Frenchman was one of the company’s star analysts for the 2010 World Cup.
In a long list of soccer megastars like Luis Figo, Raúl González, Fernando Morientes, Samuel Eto’o, Fernando Redondo and Javier Zanetti, For Alarcón, Zidane’s participation with Televisa “was not what was expected”acknowledging some disappointment at the impediments that the former Real Madrid star imposed.
“A Zidane We went to look for him in the city of Milan, but we did not see him, everything was with his representative. A large delegation from Televisa went to negotiate his contract and everything went very well, the amount to be paid, believe me, it was not a minor figurethe number of programs in which he would appear and finally we had Zinedine Zidane,” the journalist said on his YouTube channel.
“The World Cup was about to start, we knew that he spoke Spanish and the expectation was great, a great promotional campaign was carried out. Of course, someone told me: ‘He is not very smiling or has great affability, it’s not that he’s rude, but he’s not the most talkative or easy to smile’. And indeed, just like that, a guy who listened to you and paid attention, but who didn’t smile.”
Zidane refused to talk about France, Mexico and everything
With the papers signed and premiering The World Cup Play the same daythe then director of Televisa Deportes was tremendously surprised when Zidane said that he would not touch an infinity of subjects because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t know anything, like del Tri, despite being a rival of the French in the Group Phase.
“The most dramatic thing is that half an hour left for his presentation He asks me to speak to me to tell me: ‘I am not talking about the French National Team, about any Real Madrid player, about arbitration, about my past, of the header to Materazzinor of the Mexican National Team because I do not know‘. I froze thinking: ‘Are we going to talk about cooking or what?’ It was a very dramatic moment because we were about to start the first program of the World Cup,” he recalled.
“We convinced him that he had to try to talk about all those issues, however, it was very difficult. He responded with very short sentences, he did not go into the issues in depth, he was tired and It left a different taste in our mouths than what we had thought, we believed that we were going to have someone who with that capacity and experience was going to contribute a lot to us, but everything went by the dropper. Always very involved with some commitments, although we never knew what kind. It didn’t go very well for us with Zinedine Zidane“.