Zidane's home debut ends without a win

A draw is rarely the story anyone wants on a managerial debut, let alone one played in front of a home crowd that turned up expecting something closer to a statement. Zidane took his seat for his first match in charge of France on home soil and watched his side share the points with Italy, 1-1, in a Nations League League A fixture that The Guardian reports saw France reduced to ten men.

The specifics of the dismissal weren't laid out in full, but the broad shape of the night is clear enough: France went down a man, Italy dug in, and Gianluigi Donnarumma made sure whatever chances came his way didn't turn the draw into a defeat. For a goalkeeper who has made a career out of exactly this kind of rearguard composure, it was a familiar script.

A debut to forget, not quite

Zidane doesn't get a soft landing. Managing France was always going to come with scrutiny attached to every scoreline, and a Nations League draw at home, with a red card in the mix, is not the kind of start that quiets any of it. The Stade de France has seen bigger nights under bigger pressure, but a first home game ending level against Italy, down to ten men, is the sort of result that gets picked apart on the walk back to the dressing room.

Italy, for their part, will take the point and the clean sheet of a sort that Donnarumma's display represented. A draw away from home against a Zidane-led France, with a numerical advantage for a chunk of the match, is a result their camp can file as a job reasonably done.

Belgium cruise, Northern Ireland roar

Elsewhere in League A, Belgium made light work of Turkey, winning 3-0 to pick up a routine three points. It's the kind of scoreline that doesn't generate headlines on its own, but it keeps Belgium ticking along in the group without any fuss.

The bigger story outside Paris came from Northern Ireland, who put three past Ukraine without reply. A 3-0 win in League A is a serious result for a side whose promotion ambitions depend on exactly this kind of emphatic night, and it's a scoreline that forces a second look at the group table: Northern Ireland, level on goals scored with Belgium this matchday, now sit in genuine promotion contention off the back of it.