GOAL 

Johan Cruyff says Real Madrid "f****d up" in their handling of putting Zinedine Zidane in charge of the club's second team.

The former Madrid star was given control of Real Madrid Castilla in the summer despite not holding the relevant coaching certificates, which saw him banned from the touchline late last year.

The decision was overturned by the Spanish authorities and the Frenchman is back in charge of the team who play in Segunda Division B.

However, Cruyff believes such an incident should never have happened and the club should have spotted it earlier.

"It created an absurd problem because Real Madrid knew he didn’t have a licence," he said in an interview with El Enganche. "Why didn't they bring it up? It’s a lack of quality from both parties.

"You have to act legally. I don’t understand how everything came out two months later. That’s what annoys me. Madrid have completely f****d up because someone from their offices should have warned about this with a phone call.

"There are few players as good as Zidane was. So we shouldn’t be asking him to learn something he has demonstrated that he already knows."

The Barcelona icon also admitted that there are flaws in the coaching system in Spain. 

"It’s true there are always things you don’t know. In Netherlands we changed that. We made it so that when you are an assistant with the national team, as with Frank de Boer, Marco Van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ronald Koeman, you automatically learn and get the certificates.

"I wanted to get my coaching badges after retiring and I asked to take the exam, but they told me I needed to study for four years. I told them they were crazy. Who is going to study for four years? How is someone going to teach me technical things when I know more than they do?"