The man who just took over France learned coaching by working under the man who just took over Real Madrid. In November 2010, Mourinho brought Zidane onto his own staff as an adviser, and Zidane sat in on his training sessions and team meetings. That is where Zidane started learning the job. Eight months later Mourinho helped get him promoted to sporting director of the first team. Zidane said at the time that Mourinho had been fundamental to the move. One of his early wins was backing the signing of a teenage Raphaël Varane from Lens. The warmth did not last. About a year later Zidane was moved to running youth development, and ESPN reported he was one of the few people at the club willing to question how Mourinho worked. Asked in 2017 what working with him had been like, Zidane chose his words carefully and landed on one: interesting. He has also said he could never have been Mourinho's assistant. Mourinho gets called defensive. His 2011-12 Madrid took 100 points and scored 121 goals, both league records at the time. He won 32 of 38 games. Cristiano Ronaldo scored 46 league goals that season and two other forwards passed 20. In three years he never took Madrid to a Champions League final. Zidane gets called the artist. His 2017-18 side finished third in the Spanish league on 76 points, 17 behind Barcelona, and won the Champions League anyway. He won his first Champions League final, against Atlético Madrid in 2016, with 48 percent of the ball. Across 263 games in charge he took 11 trophies, about one every 24 matches, including three Champions League titles in a row. So Mbappé's league season goes to the man who holds Madrid's record for goals in a season, and his tournament football goes to the man who won three straight knockout competitions while finishing third in his own league. Last year Mbappé scored 42 goals in 44 games for Madrid and finished top scorer in both the Spanish league and the Champions League. He then won the World Cup scoring charts with 10 goals and passed Lionel Messi as the tournament's all-time leading scorer. Madrid finished second, France finished fourth, and he ended the year with nothing. He is 27 and has never had a France manager other than Didier Deschamps, who picked him at 18 and kept him for nine years. The two men now shaping the rest of his career started out with one of them opening the door for the other.