Thierry Henry was the best trainer, Frank Lampard the angriest, Eric Cantona was my protector but this is why Zinedine Zidane was the best
Emmanuel Petit says that Zinedine Zidane delivered the greatest team talk of his career in the 1998 World Cup final.
The French legend scored twice against Brazil with Petit grabbing the third as France made history in Paris to win the biggest prize in world football on home soil.
Zidane will go down as one of the greatest players of all time, and Petit admitted he was the best player he ever played with and against. And being a man of few words it meant that when Zizou spoke, people listened.
Speaking to Andy Goldstein and Darren Bent on talkSPORT Drive, Petit said: «He never talks, but in the World Cup final we were so excited and winning the tie 2-0 [at half time] and were so close to touching the trophy.
“I remember the manager smashing the table, he’d never done that before and said, ‘calm down, we’re just at half-time and must come back onto the pitch with the feeling that it’s 0-0’.
“Then Zizou spoke, like Didier Deschamps and just said a few words. Because he never talks, that was important for us.
“We needed our leader to have some words because we were losing the plot. We were leading the score and so excited that we could have lost the game.»
Asked what Zidane said, Petit recalled: «I can’t remember, but just a few words to say concentrate on what we are doing.
»He just said ‘we were so close to making history. You have no idea. Thousands of peoples – hundreds of thousands of people in history have tried to make history. We have the chance to do that and just 45 minutes to do it’.”
Petit has played with some legendary figures during his career and named France and Arsenal teammate Thierry Henry as the best he's played with in training, saying: «He was a striker and strikers – even on the training ground – want to
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