Zidane's Early Decisions: Mbappe Remains Captain
Zinedine Zidane has barely taken the France job and already the outlines of his reign are clear. On Friday, as he unveiled his first 23-man squad for the upcoming Nations League fixtures, he confirmed the obvious and unsettled the assumed in the space of a few minutes.
Kylian Mbappe keeps the armband. His position on the pitch, though, is very much Zidane’s to decide.
Mbappe the captain, not the No 9
Speaking to the media, Zidane confirmed that the new France era will still be led by the same face. Mbappe remains captain, the reference point in a group that now includes five uncapped players and the unmistakable feel of a refresh.
But the manager quickly moved from status to tactics. Mbappe, he reminded everyone, is not chained to the centre.
“He is capable of playing in all three positions. He has said it himself,” Zidane told reporters, before making his own view plain: “Me, for example, I like him a lot on the left.”
That single line cuts through months of debate. Under previous managers and at club level, Mbappe has often been pushed into the central striker’s role, a pure No 9 asked to finish moves rather than start them. Zidane, one of the game’s great playmakers, clearly sees something different: Mbappe as the left-sided spearhead, arriving from wide, facing the game, not playing it with his back to goal.
For defenders, that is a very different problem.
The defensive question Zidane refuses to indulge
No France coach can escape the Mbappe discourse, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to swing toward his work without the ball. Since his move to Real Madrid, Spanish pundits have questioned the defensive effort of the club’s star forwards. The theme followed Zidane into this press conference.
He cut it down quickly.
“It is a false subject, a false debate, it will have to be managed like all the other players,” he said when asked about Mbappe’s defensive investment. “When we do not have the ball, we will have to make an effort. It will not be a problem for Kylian.”
That response does two things. It protects his captain, and it sets a standard. No special rules, no indulgence. Mbappe will be asked to run, press and track like everyone else. The armband does not grant defensive exemptions.
For a squad featuring new faces and established stars, the message is blunt: reputation does not excuse you from the dirty work.
Steering clear of the political storm
The questions were never going to stay purely tactical. French football now lives at the intersection of sport, politics and public debate, and Zidane found himself dragged toward that crossroads almost immediately.
He was asked about the 2027 French presidential elections. He was also pressed on the recent controversy surrounding Mbappe’s refusal to wear a t-shirt in full support of Ceuta residents, a gesture that had triggered heated discussion in France.
Zidane wanted no part of it.
“I am going to dedicate myself to this task, manager of the France national team,” he said. He acknowledged he has personal convictions “like everyone else” and that he is “a citizen,” but drew a clear line on broadcasting them. “As for sharing them... Everyone does as they want, but I am going to try to dedicate myself to this task.”
In other words: football first. The national team manager’s chair in France has often become a platform for broader commentary. Zidane, at least publicly, is refusing that role. His authority will be built on what happens on the pitch, not at the ballot box.
A new era begins in Kocaeli
The talking stops on September 25. That is when France travel to Kocaeli to face Turkiye in League A, the first competitive step of the Zidane era. Three days later comes Brussels and a meeting with Belgium, a far sterner test and an immediate gauge of how quickly this revamped squad can absorb new demands.
By then, the questions that hung over this press conference will start to meet answers on the grass. Does Mbappe indeed start on the left, where Zidane “likes him a lot”? How aggressively does this France side press without the ball, with their captain leading the line of engagement rather than standing apart from it? And how quickly do those five uncapped players find their place in a dressing room that suddenly has a fresh hierarchy and a legendary coach at the top of it?
Zidane has set the tone: clarity on leadership, flexibility on roles, zero appetite for off-field distractions. The next few weeks will show whether that is enough to turn a new chapter into a new standard.
