Player Review

I am very unfamiliar with Zidane as a player in real life as I have not been watching soccer for very long. Everyone I talked to who was familiar with him described him as "World-Class", and "One of the best ever" which got me incredibly excited after I some how was able to pull him out of an Untradeable Ultimate pack from Icon Swaps. While he was most often recommended at CAM, I decided to run him as my LCM in a 4141 and his custom tactics set to Get Forward to essentially fill in that attacking midfielder role. Now onto the individual parts of his game:

Passing:

As my real only attacking midfielder, I had the opportunity to take advantage of his excellent passing ability on all of my runs. There isn't much to say here besides the fact he can complete any pass you ask him to with incredible accuracy, and enough curve/touch to get it there with perfect delivery. He had an awesome connection with my IF Benzema on long runs behind the defense, and also the short back and forth play to buildup a run. The curve on his through-balls are outstanding and to be honest at times I feel like the pass was terrible read by me, but his ability made it happen. Crossing wise I didn't have many opportunities but on the handful of attempts they were on target, just nothing came of it.

Shooting:

There is no doubt in my mind there is where Zidane has shown me the most that he is one of the best cards in the game. I used Engine on him and his base shooting stats were perfectly enough for me. Inside the box he is powerful and accurate about 90% of the time. Funny enough if it wasn't a goal it ended up hitting either the post or the crossbar which I have never seen before. I probably had 2 total shots out of 25 attempts across 4 games that actually didn't either go to the goalie, in the net, or hitting the bar. The place I felt Zidane shined the most was scoring outside of the box, and even as far as outside the corners of the box. The curve on his long shot was insane and to be honest there were a few attempts where I didn't see any openings in the box and decided to just yeet it and was amazed to see him top corner it. I am by no means good at hitting finesse shots with any real consistency, but holy cow does he make it easy.

Dribbling:

I am not very good at dribbling, but having 5* skills as an available option for me made this an interesting card to use. Nothing really more to say, he is great at breaking players down in the midfield with some unique moves. Every move he makes feels responsive and quick. On top of that he doesn't get knocked off the ball very often.

Defending:

As a CM i figured I could take advantage of some of his defensive skills a bit when it was needed and overall he hasn't been bad, but the bigger issue I've had is that he doesn't play with much defensive aggression when you enter defense in the final third. He will cut lanes and make defensive plays for me around the center line but tends to fade as the defense goes deeper.

Physicals:

For the way I play the game his mix of speed and power gives me someone who can play win any matchup you put him in. Against stronger defenders he is quicker and agile enough to get around them with no issue, and when it comes to lighter more agile players he isn't afraid to put a body on them and bully them off the ball or even bully them to keep it away. His pace is susceptible to really fast guys getting on his case, but their strength is never really enough to consistently challenge him. His agility is solid and I found myself actually not using skill moves as often as I thought i would and instead just using his quick and decisive change of direction to get myself much needed space to pull off a shot.

"FEEL":

Overall he just feels "right". He is incredibly smooth on ball, and its just a pleasure to have the opportunity to experience it. My only real complaints are that his M/M work rate sometimes makes him seem uninterested in committing to and attack, or pushing deeper in to the box to play some defense. I highly recommend pairing him with some a more traditional destroyer, and a box to box midfielder but he is so good he could probably play each of those roles depending on the chemistry. For my team having IF Valverde be the box to box and IF Casemiro be the destroyer means that Zidane doesn't really need to play defense for my team defense to be complete and i can just focus on having him attack where I feel like he is at his best. Some other good notes I have from using him is that even when people challenge him and the ball gets knocked loose he almost always finds a way to maintain possession, and when the ball is loose in the box(whether blocked or lost possession) he seems to always come screaming in from who knows where and get possession or put up a nasty shot on goal. Really nothing better than seeming his semi bald head come out of nowhere for a goal he had to right have scored given the fact he was 15 yards away just a few seconds before it was netted.