A strike in each half from French forward Karim Benzema handed Real a 2-1 victory against Villarreal at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano and the La Liga title along with it, although they would have been crowned champions whatever the result as second-placed Barcelona slumped to defeat at home to 10-man Osasuna. 

It was Real's 10th victory in a row since the restart from the Covid-19 break, as Zidane's team have overturned a two-point deficit from Barcelona to seal a 34th La Liga title in their long and storied history, but only their third in the past 12 seasons.

For Zidane, it is a second La Liga crown as manager to add to the one he picked up in the 2016-17 season, and accompanies the famous 'threepeat' of Champions League titles won between 2016 and 2018.

The Frenchman with the Midas touch has achieved this latest feat with what is far from a vintage Real team; in sealing the title, Real have largely ground out results rather than glittered (while rival fans will somewhat bitterly point to a spate of VAR penalty decisions going their way during the run-in).

Barcelona may have been a mess for the past few months (more on which below), but Real have capitalized and been clinical when it mattered most.

Yet again for Los Blancos, this has been a triumph born of the understated genius of the Frenchman they have at the helm.

The Covid-19 hiatus meant that once football restarted, the game in Spain and elsewhere would be faced with a unique situation of matches coming thick and fast, testing squad rotation and depth to the limit for the majority teams.

Zidane has risen to that unique challenge, tweaking and tinkering to perfect effect. As Spanish outlet AS has noted, the Frenchman has alternated formation as required between 4-3-3, 4-4-2 and 4-2-3-1, fitting in the personnel available and managing game-time in a congested fixture list.

The players have responded ideally. Many feared we had seen the best of the 34-year-old Luka Modric, but he has been integral to Real's latest title success, starting 22 of the 31 La Liga games he was available for this campaign, including Thursday's game against Villarreal, and chipping in with three goals and eight assists. 

Sergio Ramos has continued to be his wily, imperious best at the back, scoring at the other end by converting penalty after penalty (20 in a row, in fact), as well as free-kicks the type of which Lionel Messi would be proud. 

Karim Benzema, so long in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo, has 21 goals and eight assists in 36appearances this campaign – a haul which would arguably be higher if he had not shared spot-kick duties with Ramos.

In goal, Thibaut Courtois has kept 18 clean sheets in 34 La Liga games, finally establishing himself as the Belgian wall which Real thought they had bought from Chelsea back in the summer of 2018. 

Younger players such as Brazilian trio Vinicius, Rodrygo and Militao (20, 19 and 22 respectively) have all played their part during the run-in, being skillfully deployed by Zidane alongside the old guard such as Marcelo, Toni Kroos and Casemiro as the Frenchman shows glimpses of what the Real Madrid of future years could come to rely on.  

Zidane is not a manager with a distinctive tactical imprint along the lines of Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola, and will not leave behind an discernable epithet in the mold of 'heavy metal football' or 'tiki-taka'. Nor is he as bombastic on the touchline as the German or as relentlessly fidgety as the Spaniard.

Zidane will, though, leave behind a trophy cabinet to rival any of his coaching contemporaries, or anyone from any other era for that matter. 

A lack of distinctive coaching imprint may make Zidane's genius harder to measure, but it undoubtedly exists.  

If there is any blueprint behind it, then it perhaps lies in his man-management: Zidane coaxes the best out of players rather than coaching it into them.  

The 48-year-old French World Cup winner has previously admitted as much in his own words, saying: “I’m a different type of coach, an unusual type of coach I think…

"I was never going to tell Ronaldo or Modric how to kick a ball.No coach who comes in can improve the skills of players like Ronaldo and Modric.

“But everything else that goes with that, everything that goes with sharing and teamwork, thinking we’ll do it this way rather than that way, and showing them how to do that, that’s what I want to do."

It's an approach which has again paid dividends for Real in their successful title pursuit, and which Ramos alluded to after the victory against Villarreal sealed the title. 

"Zidane is the key. We believe in him and in his work. Every time he comes, what he touches, he has the hand of a saint. He is unique," the Real Madrid skipper said of his manager.