Like father like son for Enzo Zidane?

It emerged this week that Coach Jose Mourinho invited 16-year-old Enzo Zidane to train with the Real Madrid first team. Could it be that the son of legendary France midfielder Zinedine is shaping up to follow in his father’s footsteps?

Enzo has been associated with Madrid for a number of years now and represented a number of their youth teams, most recently the Cadete A or Under-17 side. He like his father plays as an attacking midfielder and a number of critics have said he is the mirror image of Zidane Snr on the field.

Zinedine Zidane is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and has taken on the role of first team director with Madrid and will see firsthand if his eldest son has what it takes to succeed as a professional footballer and carry on the family tradition.

Zidane Snr began his career with Cannes in France and is the son of Algerian immigrants; he went to make over 60 appearances for the club and was part of the team that finished in the clubs highest league position in their history, 4^th in 1991.

He continued his footballing education in France and was transferred to Bordeaux in 1992, where he became part of an extremely successful team alongside Christophe Dugarry and Bixente Lizarazu. It is rumoured that in 1995 Blackburn showed an interest in Zidane to which the then Chairman, Jack Walker said, “Why do you want Zidane when we have Tim Sherwood.”

Whatever the truth a move to England never emerged and he eventually left Bordeaux in 1996, having won the Intertoto Cup in 1995 as well as finishing as a runner up in the 1996 UEFA Cup. His destination was Seire A, and Turin club Juventus.

At the time Juventus had just won the Champions League and they paid £3.2m for the Frenchman’s services. It was in Italy that his career really began to take off; he won back to back league titles in ’97 and ’98 as well as reaching two more Champions League finals, although Juventus lost in both of them.

In 2001 Real Madrid paid a world record fee of £47m to sign Zidane and add him to their growing collection of ‘Galacticos’, alongside the likes of Ronaldo, Figo, Raul, and later David Beckham. In the 2002 UEFA Champions League final at Hampden Park he scored perhaps one the greatest goals of his generation against Bayer Leverkusen and won Madrid the European Cup.

He was even more successful in his international career winning the World Cup in France in 1998 as part of a vintage French team and two years later the same team added the European Championships crown to their collection. Though he is perhaps mostly remembered for a moment of lunacy against Italy in the 2006 World Cup final, where he head butted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the chest and was sent off in his final international match.

Though one moment of madness must not blot the career of a man who won all there is to win on and off the field, he was named FIFA World player of the year on three separate occasions and awarded the Ballon D’or in 1998.

If Enzo is to replicate the achievements of his father it will surely have to be one of the greatest football phenomenons of the 21^st century. Although his talent has been recognised and Mourinho must believe in him to give him this chance the odds are more than stacked against him. Madrid has not produced a single first team regular from their youth system since Iker Casillas.

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