At five foot seven, he knew he wasn’t the most physically intimidating midfielder, or the best athlete, so he wasn’t concerned about his own performance. He felt free to devote himself to serving others. On the French national team, his primary focus was putting the ball at the feet of the spectacularly gifted goal-scoring midfielder Zinedine Zidane. “For every ten balls that I played, I gave nine to him,” Deschamps said. Though he wasn’t familiar with the writings of Harvard’s Richard Hackman, Deschamps’s approach to leadership was as functional as it gets. On a team, he said, “you can’t only
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