Will Zidane be Latest Winner as a Player and Coach, or will Simeone Join Exclusive Club?

Real Madrid’s Zinédine Zidane could become the seventh man to win the European Cup as a player and a coach having first won it as an assistant to Carlo Ancelotti in 2014.

 Zidane now has the chance to emulate his former boss after taking over from Rafael Benítez in January. As a player, he had lost in the 1997 and 1998 finals with Juventus and won both the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship before at last tasting UEFA Champions League success in 2002 with a memorable winner for Madrid against Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow.

His opponent in Milan today, Diego Simeone, has never won the European Cup but did play for Internazionale Milan in their 1998 UEFA Cup victory before coaching Atlético Madrid to the UEFA Europa League in 2012.

 Should he help guide Atlético Madrid to their first UEFA Champions League crown, he will become only the third non-European coach in the competition’s history to win the famous trophy – and the first since 1965.

It is unlikely to have escaped Simeone’s notice that the two names he would be following are fellow Argentinians: Luis Carniglia (Real Madrid, 1958 and 1959) and Helenio Herrera (Internationale Milan 1964 and 1965).