‘I Played Zidane in Pre-Season – Here’s How he Embarrassed me and Steven Gerrard’

The two sides met in a pre-season tournament at the Bernabeu and, despite Murphy’s experience playing against some of the best footballers around during his career and especially during his seven-year stint at Anfield, the ex-player recently admitted he was in awe of Zidane before they faced off.

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Speaking on TalkSport’s new show The Shortlist, Murphy spoke in depth about the match. He revealed how excited he was to play against the Frenchman, but he also admitted that Zidane embarrassed him during the game and left both him and Gerrard looking a little silly.

Murphy and Gerrard Tried to ‘Smash’ Zidane
Frenchman left them looking silly
Zinedine Zidane and Danny Murphy
Coming up against someone of Zidane’s calibre can be quite exciting, but it can also be incredibly frustrating. Watching him continuously get the better of yourself and your teammates with relative ease has to sting. It bothered Murphy and he admitted that both he and Gerrard wanted to teach their opponent a lesson and intended to rough him up a bit.

“It gets to a point where I’m like ‘come on, we’ve got to put ourselves about a bit. Me and Stevie (Gerrard) give ourselves a little nod as to say, ‘let’s smash him.’

“He’s [Zidane] got the ball in the middle of the park and I’ve come in from one side to try and smash him, he’s done this mad little turn and I’ve missed him. Then Stevie’s come in to do him and he’s skipped over him. Me and Stevie are both on the floor looking at each other and he’s still got the ball. Honestly he was incredible. I loved him anyway, but I loved him even more.”

Throughout his career, Gerrard earned a reputation as one of the best midfielders in Premier League history. He could compete with the best of them, so hearing how Zidane embarrassed him like this is just a testament to how good the Frenchman was and Murphy saw first-hand just how superb he was.

The World Cup winner ran the show
Zinedine Zidane and Danny Murphy
While it was just a friendly, Zidane didn’t hold back. Murphy wanted to see just how good the Real Madrid man could be, having watched him in the past, but didn’t quite expect him to be so impressive.

“You know when you’re already in awe of someone, you’re thinking ‘I wanna see how good he really is’. It was one of the best exhibitions of midfield player I’d ever seen in terms of controlling tempo.

“It wasn’t even like he was running past people with dribbles. He was just popping it and popping up in different positions. Left foot, right foot. He’s running the show.”

Over the course of an illustrious 17-year football career, Zidane became one of the greatest midfielders to ever play the sport. With spells at Cannes, Bordeaux, Juventus and Real Madrid, he was untouchable and very few could pass a ball like he could. Murphy was a big fan and despite the beating he’d taken on the pitch, he came away from the game smiling after an interaction with the Frenchman in the dressing rooms.

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Despite Murphy and Gerrard trying to “smash” Zidane with a couple of rough tackles during the game to try and save face, the Frenchman was all smiles once things wrapped up and even visited the Liverpool dressing room to speak to Gerard Houlier. While he was in there, he spoke to the players and approached Murphy, calling him by his first name. The Englishman revealed just how much that meant to him at the time.

“Zidane came in to see Gerard in the changing room in shorts, a pair of flip flops and a vest and he walked up to me and said ‘Alright Danny, well played.’

“I was like ‘he knows my name!’ That was a bigger compliment than anything and then he said hello to a few of the other boys. I thought ‘Zinedine Zidane knows my name, I’ve done something right somewhere’.”