Manchester United are playing a familiar game to play amid manager merry-go-round

The only coach to secure a Champions League three-peat is still unemployed. Yet Zinedine Zidane is behind Marco Silva to become the next Manchester United manager with bookmakers.

Zidane has only ever coached the all-conquering Real Madrid Galacticos that he was bequeathed by Carlo Ancelotti and Jose Mourinho. Madrid had a world-class best-in-class squad and Zidane had been embedded at the Bernabeu for the best part of 15 years.

That aura from Zidane's playing career commanded immediate respect and his man-management was similar to the popular Ancelotti and the antithesis of predecessor Rafael Benitez. There is a clip of Zidane's half-time team talk from the 2017 Champions League final that would give Sunday League managers hope.

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Zidane instructs the Madrid players to be aggressive in defence, move the ball quickly onto the wings and play higher up. Cristiano Ronaldo is told to run at the Juventus defenders and Karim Benzema to get in behind them. They are assured if they “play out wide, through the centre, on the deck” Madrid will score.

And, if all else failed, Ronaldo would execute an audaciously awesome overhead kick. Or Gareth Bale would trump him with the greatest goal in a European Cup final.

Imagine Zidane inheriting a broken dressing room at United teeming with underachievers and rejects from Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. There is maybe one world-class player and Bruno Fernandes has fallen from that stratosphere this season.

A Madrid player who was coached by Zidane said he was so laissez-faire he would sometimes show around 15 minutes of