Luca Zinedine Zidane was born on May 13, 1998, in Aix-en-Provence, France, around fifteen miles north of La Castellane, the modernist Marseilles banlieue that would be made famous by his father, Zinedine Yazid Zidane. Eleven weeks after Luca’s birth, his father made history by winning the World Cup for France at the Stade de France.
The stadium was located in Saint-Denis, the Parisian suburb to which Zinedine’s father, Smaïl Zidane, had moved from what was then still colonial Algeria, working as a construction worker. He was on the verge of returning to Algeria when he met Zinedine’s mother, Malika, who was born in the same village as Smail but had moved to Marseilles when she was a young girl; the couple ended up settling in La Castellane. France’s World Cup win in 1998 was historic not merely because it was their first ever, but also because it bore the weight of history itself. France’s colonialist past and the post-colonial present were together embodied by players whose Blackness and brownness reflected the immigrant and second generation populations of the country’s banlieues. The joy and hope engendered by the World Cup win hastened an enthusiastic, if temporary, reimagination of the famed tricolore of French identity from bleu, blanc, et rouge to black, blanc, et beur, in acknowledgment of the diversity of a nation that could field the Guadeloupean Lilian Thuram, the Basque Bixente Lizarazu, and the North African-descended Zinedine Zidane under the same flag.
Perhaps fittingly, it was first into the streets of Saint-Denis—once home to Smaïl Zidane and now to North and West African immigrants, their children and grandchildren—that throngs of celebrants poured out of the Stade de France, and then, a few days later in Paris, where Smaïl’s son’s face was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe to chants of “Zidane Président!,” quite literally at the historical axis (axe historique) of the capital city. Born of Algerian immigrants, “Zizou,” as Zidane was nicknamed, had become an icon of France itself.
One might imagine all of this to be, understandably, a great deal to bear for anyone to be blessed (or cursed) to carry forward the surname “Zidane,” nevermind someone who also wields “Zinedine” as a middle name. And so it is for Luca Zidane, the second of four brothers—Enzo, Théo, and Elyaz—all of whom are, or have been professional footballers. Enzo, the eldest at 30, retired from professional football in 2024; Théo, at 23, plays as a midfielder for Córdoba FC in Spain’s second division, and Elyaz, the youngest at 20, plays at center back with the reserve team of Spanish La Liga club Real Betis. All four brothers developed at Real Madrid’s youth academy before heading elsewhere for more opportunities for first-team football; Luca managed to play a number of times for the senior team, mostly as a reserve. Arguably, Luca is, to date, the most successful of the four, not simply because he is the current starting goalkeeper for Spanish second division club Granada, but because in 2025, he was selected for the Algerian senior national team in advance of the African Cup of Nations—a tournament where, as first-choice keeper, he represented the nation of his grandfather, Smaïl, with distinction, as Algeria progressed to the quarterfinals where they lost, 2-0, to Nigeria.
Luca’s selection for the national side was, however, not a foregone conclusion. It required him to switch nationalities to Algeria from France, the nation of his birth and with which he had won the 2015 under-17 European Championship, having made three saves to win a semi-final penalty shoot-out. The invitation came from the president of the Algerian Football Federation, Walid Sadi, but the final decision to switch nationalities came only after consultation with Luca’s father and grandfather, both of whom supported what was ultimately his choice.
“When I think of Algeria, I remember my grandfather,” Zidane said in a 2025 BeIN Sports interview, adding, “[s]ince childhood, we’ve had this Algerian culture in the family.” In another interview with the publication CAFOnline, Zidane expanded upon how he made his decision: “My grandfather encouraged me to play for Algeria. He wanted me to be proud of my origins, and I wanted to honor him. My father told me to make my choice and to do it with conviction.”
It bears a great deal of significance that the Algerian keeper’s jersey currently bears the name “Zidane” on its back, perhaps for the nation writ large, but certainly for its wearer, given that in his club career, the young goalkeeping Zidane preferred to wear the name “Luca” instead, mindful of the great expectations born by his surname. Ahead of the 2025 African Cup of Nations, Algeria’s captain, Riyad Mahrez, addressed this particular legacy: “Luca is just like everyone else. He’s settled in well and gives everything for the team,” Mahrez told BeIN Sport, adding, “But it’s true—his last name carries weight.”
Luca’s embrace of the Algerian federation’s invitation is one that not merely honors the country of his grandparents’ birth, but also spiritually completes a “homecoming” of sorts that perhaps native-born and French Algerians likely desired, but never got to see: a Zidane—though perhaps not the one they first imagined—playing in the vibrant green of the Fennecs’ home kit. Zinedine Zidane had, until 2006, only visited Algeria as a boy, but as the writer Laurent Dubois recounts in Soccer Empire, his history of French football, in the wake of the twin tragedies of the 2006 World Cup final—France’s loss and Zizou’s red card as a result of spectacularly headbutting Italy’s Marco Materrazzi—Zidane fancied a long-awaited return to Algeria, reportedly to “find [his] roots” in the land of his parents. The Algerian government welcomed him, in Dubois’s words, “with as much pomp and attention and as much more affection than a visiting head of state.” Zidane traveled with his parents and visited the Kabyle village of Aguemoune in the Boukhèlifa commune, where Smaïl and his mother Malika were born. Luca was 8 years old at the time and did not make the trip; he was training in the Real Madrid youth academy at the time.
During that visit, Zidane also met with members of the Le Onze de l’Independence (The Independence Eleven) side, the famous football team featuring 30 professional players of Algerian heritage who, in 1958, clandestinely left France in order to create a squad that would represent, on a world tour, the Front de Libération Nationale—an independence movement that ultimately became the main vehicle for Algeria’s liberation struggle during the Algerian War (1954-1962). Two FLN players, Mustapha Zitouni and Rachid Mekhloufi, had expected to be part of the 1958 French World Cup squad but sacrificed their place at the tournament for the greater mission of broadcasting Algeria’s nationhood to the world. Football, which had been introduced to French Algeria in the 1890s by colonial administrators as a tool to inculcate the colonized with the ideals of “European civilization,” had quickly become a powerful instrument for individual and community expression, not to mention a vehicle for Algerian activism. The FLN team were, in many ways, the culmination of this subversive project. When Algeria gained independence in July 1962, the FLN team disbanded and were succeeded by the Algerian national football team.
Once Zinedine Zidane earned a cap as a member of the French national youth team in 1988, he—unlike Luca, who also debuted for France’s youth national team—could no longer choose to represent the land of and his parents, as Zitouni and Mekloufi had generations earlier. Then, FIFA’s rules stipulated that players were permanently tied to a country once they had represented a national youth team. But from 2003, the Algerian Football Federation pursued several changes in FIFA legislation that eventually allowed players to change allegiance as long as they were not capped with a senior national team. These eligibility rules now make it possible not merely for Luca but also many international stars to play football for their (or their parents’) native lands.
Today, in what many have already dubbed the “Diaspora World Cup,” these decisions are increasingly being made not out of necessity, but rather out of a desire to represent such countries. Nearly a quarter of the 1248 players selected for national teams at this year’s tournament were born in a different country than the one they represent and around 24% of players will represent a country other than the one in which they were born. France is the most common birthplace at the World Cup, boasting 98 players, but there are 76 French-born players representing other nations–far more than any other country in the competition. And, as with Luca, family does not always strictly dictate that choice: Desire Doue suits up for les Bleus while his brother Guela chose Cote d’Ivoire, while Nico and Iñaki Williams—Basque brothers who both play for Athletic Club of Bilbao—are playing for Spain and Ghana respectively. Football is forever “coming home” in the minds of many Englishmen, but for the African Diaspora, as evidenced by the likes of Antoine Semenyo—born in England, shaped by the Premier League, but who chose to represent Ghana—perhaps it already has.
It is therefore both a glittering personal and national legacy that Luca Zidane carries into the World Cup, though the entirety of the hopes and dreams of a nation rarely rest squarely upon a goalkeeper’s shoulders. That said, when that same goalkeeper concedes a somewhat preventable hat-trick to a 39-year-old Argentine under the watchful, forlorn eyes of his father, thereby spawning hundreds of “sad dad” memes, those national hopes and dreams are threatened, even if said goalscorer is arguably the greatest player to ever play the game. What has always been clear, however, to writers like C.L.R. James and to footballers like John Barnes, is that sport is shaped by a history of empire that contains both pain and possibility, subjugation and liberation, and is always, in the words of scholar Grant Farred, “crowded by the past (previous victories, the memories of excruciating losses),” as much as it is by the names of fathers and sons.