If Zidane can give Real identity beyond Galactico era, it will rank alongside Milan triumph

The mentality which pervades Real Madrid’s relentless pursuit of the Champions League was expressed by one of the club’s favourite sons, Iker Casillas, after a tense triumph in Milan. “Bye bye DÉCIMA!!,” tweeted the man whose last major honour at Real Madrid came in the Lisbon final of 2014. “Bienvenida UNDÉCIMA!!” The most important trophy is always the next one. And so it will not be long before attention turns to securing the Duodecima in Cardiff next year.

After his stunning ascension from reserve-team coach to Champions League winner in the space of five months, it is Zinedine Zidane who will take on that challenge. There had been suggestions that Real Madrid had Sevilla coach Unai Emery on standby in case things went awry in Milan. Few coaches have as much trophy-winning savvy as the man who has won three successive Europa Leagues. But he doesn’t have the Champions League, the trophy which now protects Zidane and gives him the cover necessary to shape in his own image the Real Madrid squad he inherited from Rafa Benitez in January.

"Zidane has a contract until 2018 and will stay in charge,” president Florentino Perez declared after Cristiano Ronaldo’s winning penalty had delivered an 11th European Cup. “He signed it when he took over the first team and of course he's going to continue because he's the ideal coach for Real Madrid.”

Ideal he may be in the eyes of his president right now, but there are challenges ahead that will test his managerial abilities to the limit in the way that even a Champions League final cannot. How he deals with them, how he crafts a career over years and not months, will reveal much about Zidane the manager and the lasting impact he can have on this club.

It is an unfortunate fact that from his playing days, Zidane’s name is still associated with the self-defeating largesse of the first Perez era. "Zidanes y Pavones" was the term given to the strategy of pairing hugely expensive Galactico signings with cheaper domestic supplements. It created a dangerous imbalance in the squad which guarded against sustainable success.

In an era when the rebranded Champions League has never been retained, only two teams have threatened anything like a dynasty. The most recent was Barcelona, winners in 2009 and 2011 under Pep Guardiola - and then under Luis Enrique in 2015. There was a common thread running through all three victories: a clearly delineated philosophy and players, like Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi, who implemented it on the pitch.

The first team to enjoy a period of intermittent dominance though was Real Madrid. They lifted the trophy in 1998, 2000 and 2002, the first time under Jupp Heynckes and the second two under Vicente del Bosque. But if there was a common thread it was not so easy to detect. Raul and Fernando Morientes formed a homegrown strikeforce but there was no powerful guiding principle. Del Bosque might be a fantastic coach with strong principles and peerless man-management skills, but he is not a big ideas man.

The dominant idea of this period at Real Madrid was instead imposed from the boardroom by Perez who, in the elections of July 2000, just two months after a 3-0 win over Valencia in the Champions League final in Paris, usurped incumbent Lorenzo Sanz with his promise to bring Luis Figo to the club in the first big coup of an aggressive new transfer policy which would target a superstar signing every summer.

True to his word, Perez broke the world record again in 2001 when recruiting Zidane from Juventus for £46m and the Galactico era reached its peak, just one year after it commenced, with the Frenchman’s sublime volley in the Champions League final win over Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow in 2002. Ronaldo, David Beckham and Michael Owen would arrive in consecutive summers but further success was elusive in Europe. Perez’s philosophy was broken, the Zidanes and the Pavones proved dysfunctional, and the president eventually stepped down in 2006. Real Madrid would wait 12 years from Zidane’s moment of brilliance to lift the European Cup again.

It will not have escaped Perez’s notice that on that night in Lisbon in 2014, five years after his return to the boardroom, two more world record signings scored: £80m Cristiano Ronaldo and £86m Gareth Bale. The former also scored the winning penalty in Milan last night while the latter impressed with his work-rate and quality, getting the assist for Sergio Ramos’s opening goal and having a shot cleared off the line. Clearly the Galactico reboot is not without its success stories.

Perhaps it is enough to have nights such as Lisbon and Milan, but in the endurance of the Liga title race Real Madrid have come out on top only once in the past eight seasons. This surely hints at issues below the surface which do not manifest in the brief knockout phase of the Champions League. Then ask yourself what Real Madrid really represent beyond an accumulation of superstars and you are left searching for an answer.

It is a symptom of Perez’s muddled handling of his managerial options. Sack Carlo Ancelotti, bring in Rafa Benitez, sack him after six months. In 12 seasons as president he has dispensed of 10 coaches. The benefit of continuity is shown across the capital, where Simeone, appointed in 2011, is Atleti's longest serving coach since Ricardo Zamora between 1940 and 1946.

Perez might counter that he does not have a Champions League trophy to show for his efforts, having twice been denied in the final by Real, but what Simeone certainly has succeeded in doing, on top of winning La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Europa League, is creating is an identity. Atleti's philosophy is not Barcelona's, in fact in some respects it is its direct opposite, but it is just as detectable. Family, team work, organisation, indefatigability. Atleti stand for something.

Perez's era of celebrity has been almost as vacuous as the social phenomenon it reflects, despite the trophies. Where Zidane to change that, present a new story and image to the world, it would be a managerial feat to rank alongside winning the 11th European Cup.