Pressure on Enzo Fernandez Grows as Zidane's Son Makes Real Madrid Bow

What's in a surname? Enzo Fernandez may play football under his mother's maiden name—or just as "Enzo," as can be the Spanish custom—but it is his father's surname, Zidane, that looms over every touch he takes.

The eldest son of Zinedine Zidane may never escape the shadow cast by one of the sport's true greats—few players, regardless of their bloodlines, ever have attained such heights—but so far it would not be unfair to suggest the young midfielder has hardly ventured out from underneath the simultaneously comforting and suffocating family tree.

At the weekend, Enzo, as he is known at the club, made his debut for Real Madrid's Castilla—the B team (or reserve side) that plays in Spain's Segunda Division B (effectively the third tier of Spanish football). Zidane Sr. is the team's coach—in reality, if not in job title (he is still able to attain the requisite coaching badges, the subject of a dispute at the moment).

The 19-year-old only played a handful of minutes at the end of a 2-1 win over bottom side Conquense, but he nevertheless produced one moment of skill—reminiscent of his famous father—to spark the latest round of excitement among the Twitterati.

For Enzo, that is not a new experience. A video of him playing football in the Zidane back garden (well, Zidane back football cage) became a YouTube hit, as did the skills he demonstrated in a match against Barcelona when he was still representing the under-12s.

Every move he has made has been scrutinised, compared with the legacy of his father. Jose Mourinho called a then-16-year-old Enzo into his first-team squad for training back in 2011—a move that now seems like it might have been a touch politically motivated, as it made the front page of Spanish newspaper AS.

The hope, of course, is that Enzo will prove to be as talented a footballer as his father, a Ballon d'Or winner, was in his prime. Zidane was a remarkable central midfielder, a true one of a kind; not many players inspire a documentary that simply tracks their movements over the course of 90 minutes, all of it set to classical music.

Zidane was a rare player who merged sporting ability with something artistic, turning that higher ability into Champions League titles and a World Cup victory (both of which he was integral to).

"I'm a player with technique," reads the one quote on Enzo's official Real Madrid profile. As one-sentence summaries go, it would not have done a bad job of describing his father.

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If Enzo has indeed inherited similar attributes, he will become a player to be reckoned with. The presence of all three of his siblings—Luca, Theo and Eliaz—in the Real Madrid youth academy indicates that Zidane has passed the footballing gene down to his offspring, although of course the cries of nepotism are never going to be that far away.

Zidane's stature at the club's Valdebebas training complex—he is considered first-team coach Carlo Ancelotti's long-term successor-in-waiting by many in Madrid—and position means he undoubtedly has the political sway to keep his sons in the academy where others might be cut adrift.

Not that the Frenchman sees it that way.

"Enzo knows perfectly what it means to bear the Zidane last name," Zidane said all of six years ago on French TV channel Canal+ (via Goal.com), when Enzo was barely a teenager. "It is something that he cannot escape, but he is well aware of that. One thing is clear: I know that he does not have square feet."

There is a certain poetry to that endorsement, even if it hardly lessens the pressure on young Enzo's shoulders. Now, as he nears the start of his senior career, that scrutiny is only heightening. When he was first called up to France's under-19 squad in March (he had previously represented Spain at junior levels), then-coach Willy Sagnol insisted the player, who had yet to make a senior appearance, would not be treated any differently than any other member of the squad.

"We're all somebody's son," Sagnol, whose France career overlapped with Zidane's, said (per the Guardian). "There won't be any more expectation on him."

For the media, of course, it is a different matter. Senior squad coach Didier Deschamps was also asked about Enzo recently—something unthinkable for a player of Enzo's current achievements, were it not for his particular ancestry.

"Leave him alone, this is all he needs," Deschamps said in response (via Reuters). "His name is hard to carry. He's just a player with a well-known name.

"It's never easy, and it's even less easy with his name."

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Of course, history is littered with stories of famous offspring who were never as good as their fathers, whether that being because they lacked the hunger, the physical attributes or the natural aptitude to measure up.

Paul Dalglish was never Kenny, Scotland Gemmill was never Archie, Nigel Clough was never Brian. The list goes on and on.

With his innate understanding of the game and ability to orchestrate a match, perhaps Zinedine Zidane's historical kindred spirit is Johan Cruyff, the Dutch master of the 1970s. Cruyff's son, Jordi, would end up playing for both Barcelona and Manchester United but was never even a vague imitation of his father.

United boss Sir Alex Ferguson admitted in his autobiography that signing Cruyff, who had shone at Euro 96, had been a misjudgement. But in retirement Jordi has observed that it was never the pressure of the name that weighed him down; he was simply constrained by the limits of the talent he was blessed with.

The predictions, the hopes for his future, the expectations—all of that was a construct of the press, which shifted perceptions and left him in an unwinnable situation.

"There are two types of football players—the legends and the mortals," Cruyff told the Daily Mail in 2013. "My father is a legend and I am a mortal. ... I never had a problem with the pressure to live up to my father's achievements. It was more the media who were dreaming that my genes would be identical to my father's. To my pain, it was never like this!"

Enzo might consider those words. Barely 19, he is still just in the very early stages of his professional career.

The presence of his father within the coaching setup will help his chances, but it will also inevitably increase the talk of nepotism. Would he really be on the club's books if he was related to a nobody? Would they have cut him loose by now if his dad wasn't a senior figure?

Such whispers are inevitable; to think anything else would almost be naive.

"He won't live his father's history and I think Zizou will agree with me," Deschamps noted. "Zizou lived his life, had his career. Enzo will have his own."

While the famous father can be an oppressive burden, it can also be a launching pad to greater success. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain looks well on the way to eclipsing his father, Mark Chamberlain (also an England international), while Thiago Alcantara has hardly been held back by the spectre of his own father, ex-Brazil international Mazinho.

Neither of those players, of course, has a father who became quite the cultural touchstone of a Zidane or Cruyff.

For Enzo, perhaps, the lesson he might be approaching is one where he learns to define himself outside of his family, and perhaps that might mean expressing his footballing ability away from Real Madrid for a period—whether that period ends up being permanent or temporary.

The jump from the Castilla to Real's senior team is a large one, one few players make without proving themselves somewhere else first. (Segunda Division B Group II can roughly be equated to League One standard, except a League One where most players are barely out of their teens. Real Madrid remains a different planet in comparison.)

That might be Enzo's eventual route. If he can block out the hype—hype he can do little about—then he might have a chance of forging his own legacy.

Or perhaps it is another of Zidane's sons, Luca, who has had the right idea all along. Luca, after all, is a goalkeeper.