It's not been a bad first year in football management for Zinedine Zidane. To be honest the French legend and former World Cup winner has been taking the piss out of experienced managers who have made it look hard all these years. Even his record without Cristiano Ronaldo is impressive!
In his first year as manager of Real Madrid, since taking over from Rafa Benitez, the former Real midfielder has won the Champions League and World Club Cup as well as broken the club's record for the longest undefeated streak.
Sure he's got a bloody good squad to do it with but Benitez wouldn't have got near those achievements if he was still at the Bernabeu rather than trying to get Newcastle back up to the Premier League.
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Last night Los Blancos continued their good run of form as Spanish football returned in the form of the Copa del Rey. They beat Sevilla 3-0 without the use of Cristiano Ronaldo and it brought to light the fact that in 11 games without him Real have won 10 and drawn one!
Of course Ronaldo does seem to generally miss games that the team should be winning anyway but there aren't many clubs who could be without a Ballon d'Or winner and still have that record.
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More impressively last night for Zidane was the fact that James Rodriguez, Alvaro Morata and Marcos Asensio played upfront together as they had numerous players out of the cup game.
Real were without Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and Lucas Vazquez, as well as Ronaldo, in last night's match as Rodriguez scored a brace and Rafael Varane bagged the third.
There's not much left for Zidane to do to impress us but a treble might just do the trick.
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