Zinedine Zidane has recorded the best ever start for a Real Madrid manager, statistics suggest. The Frenchman took over from Rafa Benitez after Madrid drew with Valencia and were languishing in third place at the half-way stage of the league campaign. Zizou has managed to register 17 wins out of 20 games, with just two draws (Malaga and Betis) and one defeat (Atletico Madrid) earning 53 points. In those 20 games, Real have managed to score a whopping 63 goals and conceded just a mere 16 giving them a goal difference of +47 which is yet another record for any Los Blancos manager in their first 20 games in charge.
In this time, Zidane has rejuvenated the side looking at a trophyless season, helping the club reach the Champions League Final and cutting down their La Liga deficit from 10 points to just 1, coming agonisingly close before Barcelona won the title at Granada.
Here are the statistics of the last five Real Madrid managers in their first 20 games in charge:
| Managers | Wins | Losses | Draws | Points |
| Zinedine Zidane | 17 | 1 | 2 | 53 |
| Rafael Benitez | 14 | 2 | 4 | 46 |
| Carlo Ancelotti | 16 | 2 | 2 | 50 |
| Jose Mourinho | 15 | 1 | 4 | 49 |
| Manuel Pellegrini | 12 | 6 | 2 | 38 |
As we can see, Zidane has had the best start of the coaches in Florentino Perez’s second tenure as Real Madrid president.
Juande Ramos, who took over from Schuster in the middle of the 2008-09 season, is the only one who can match the number of wins achieved by Zidane (17), but he could only garner 52 points as his team lost two games (Barcelona and Valencia) and drew one (Atletico) with a goal difference of +29, inferior to Zidane’s stats.
Also Read: 5 reasons why Zinedine Zidane should be retained even if Real Madrid end up trophy-less
Though he has gained support from almost all of the players in the dressing room including club captain Sergio Ramos and all-time top scorer Cristiano Ronaldo going on record to say they want him to remain at the club, Zidane himself has given no guarantee as to whether he will remain at the Santiago Bernabeu in the future. When asked about what he thinks, he said, “I haven’t won anything to think that I can carry on. What I want is to think about the day to day, and we will see at the end of the season.”
The 43-year-old will be hoping to secure his position with a victory in the Champions League final against city rivals Atletico Madrid, having already won the prestigious competition as a player in 2002 and assistant director in 2014 with Los Merengues.
