“This is not good-bye, just until later,” said Perez. “I want to thank him for all the effort and dedication. He deserves some time off,” added the president as Zidane explained that he won’t coach next season.

“It’s simple, you just have to know when to stop. I do this for the sake of the club, it would’ve been extremely tough to keep winning with me as the coach next season. We saw this in La Liga, I don’t forget those moments. This is not about me staying and then completing a bad season next year,” explained Zidane.

“My best memory here is when the president trusted in me. As a coach, the best thing for me was winning La Liga. And the worst time for me was losing against Leganes in the Copa del Rey,” he said.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the decisions we were going to make this summer. It’s part of the job. This is just a change we needed so that he club can keep winning,”