{"id":920105,"date":"2026-10-08T02:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/920105\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T02:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:22:10","slug":"hes-a-quality-player-zinedine-zidane-hails-surprise-chelsea-star-after-france-edge-past-belgium-in-nations-league-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/920105\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;He\u2019s a quality player&#8217; &#8211; Zinedine Zidane hails surprise Chelsea star after France edge past Belgium in Nations League clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While Zidane admitted his primary focus remained on his own squad, Lavia&#8217;s creative influence proved impossible to ignore. The French manager was particularly impressed by the 22-year-old&#8217;s vision in the build-up to the opening goal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn\u2019t watch his individual performance because I was keeping an eye on my own players, but I really liked his pass,&#8221; Zidane revealed. &#8220;I watched it again in the changing room at half-time, during the analysis. He\u2019s a quality player.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zidane also acknowledged the broader threat posed by the visitors, praising their overall squad depth. &#8220;But he\u2019s not the only one in the Belgian team. There are plenty of them, even amongst those who came on as substitutes,&#8221; he added. &#8220;They\u2019ll always cause us problems when we face them again. We needed to show a reaction to win, and it\u2019s good that we did.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Zidane admitted his primary focus remained on his own squad, Lavia&#8217;s creative influence proved impossible to ignore.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,2071,6187,596,2592,488095,1614,488094,85,480130,488093],"class_list":["post-920105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-belgium","tag-chelsea","tag-football","tag-france","tag-france-vs-belgium","tag-premier-league","tag-r-lavia","tag-sports","tag-uefa-nations-league-a","tag-z-zidane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}