By The universe delivered Zinedine Zidane a second chance at going out on a high, and the Madrid boss didn't make a mess of it this time. No baffling last-minute headbutts – just three consecutive Champions League trophies and an untouchable Los Blancos legacy.
The Frenchman will be an incredibly tough act to follow, but there are a few Premier League A-listers in the running who could give it a real good go...
Jurgen Klopp
Though he’s contracted to stay at Liverpool until 2022, Madrid could be forgiven for trying to poach Klopp having seen how often his team looked ready to blow Madrid away early on in Kiev last week. He’s only three years into his traditional seven-years-per-club cycle at Liverpool, though, and the necessity of ditching big names who can’t keep up with his turbo-charged brand of uber-fussball wouldn’t go down too well at galactico-centric Madrid.
Arsene Wenger
He’s already odds-on favourite to take the job thanks to a long-running link up with Madrid boss baby Florentino Perez. The tantrum-prone president has been obsessed with Le Professeur for decades, trying and failing to lure him on countless occasions. Wenger, a masochist through and through, stayed loyal to the Gunners faithful, who repaid his devotion by calling him a “derkhead” on YouTube every week. Now that he’s been replaced by notorious coward Unai Emery, the Frenchman is free to have a proper, cash-fuelled drive at winning the Champions League. Arsenal fans would be left red-faced, but no football fan could begrudge a Wenger revenge mission.
Antonio Conte
At Real, the pressure to keep the trophy cabinet-makers of Madrid frantically throwing up new units by bringing home more titles is relentless. For all that Conte’s second season turned into a nylon-tracksuited ordeal at times, the Italian showed he still knows how to win trophies. That, along with his relentless grumbling and general air of dissatisfaction with life in West London, will have Madrid’s high-ups tracking his grumpiness levels carefully.
Mauricio Pochettino
Daniel Levy saw this all coming from miles off. That’s why he tied Mauricio Pochettino down to a 5-year contract last month. The highly-rated Argentine must be looking even more downcast than usual following Zidane’s shock departure. Do Real Madrid want Pochettino enough to buy him out of his printer-fresh contract and blow the managerial transfer record to smithereens? Tottenham could do with the money – they have a shiny new stadium to pay off, after all – but the memories of the Tim Sherwood years are perhaps a little too fresh.
Tony Adams
Nobody knows the Spanish game like Tony Adams. We saw the unique way he interprets football at Granada: shuttling to the side, spinning around, looking left, looking right, mime-building an invisible wall, adding emphasis with the wild jazz hand flourishes of a coked-up magician, jitterbugging on the balls of his feet like a stooge pretending to be invigorated by a snake oil health tonic. Granada was the prelude. Madrid is where El Tony’s legend starts.
