The banner hangs just below the central staircase of the luxury hotel that has been taken over by the French women’s national team for the World Cup. Hervé Renard wanted to make sure that no one on his team could miss it.
The emblazoned motivational words are typical of the type of active messaging teams that gather around before major sports tournaments. But for this French team, and for Renard, its well-traveled coach, the words take on a special meaning after a period many on the team would like to forget.
“Only teamwork,” it wrote, “can help you realize your dreams.”
Renard used the phrase for the first time against France earlier this year, just months before the World Cup. It was not long after he was selected to replace sacked coach Corinne Diacre, but even then he knew it was a message that could resonate with a team that even its own federation has concluded is “fracture“In addition to repair.
“We lacked unity,” Renard said in a sunny rooftop interview in front of the team’s base camp last week. That’s probably the most understatement in women’s football.
France went to Australia this month as the World Cup favorite. Torn by bitter feuds, it happened in recent months lost player, welcome backAnd after that lose them again. It changed the coach, changed the approach and changed the tactics. And now it has asked Renard, a respected 54-year-old with a highly regarded Men’s World Cup resume but no previous women’s coaching experience, to make it to the semi-finals at least.
He started the process, he said, by being open about what he didn’t know.
“For me everything is new because I don’t know women’s football, how to manage girls,” he said. “I was lucky because on our staff there are a lot of people who have worked with women’s football. So I listened.
What he inherited was a talented team in disarray. Its longtime leader, Wendie Renard (who is not related to Hervé), has announced that she will not compete at the World Cup to protect her mental health. Two other stars followed suit, saying they would not return unless there was a change in the team’s leadership.
There have been controversies before under Diacre, the coach at the time, but nothing too serious or existential. A rebellious mood turned into a public rebellion.
Faced with a crisis as the World Cup loomed, the French football federation took action, announcing after a brief investigation that Diacre had to leave. The league said the rift between her and the team had become so severe that it “has reached a point of no return.”
Hervé Renard, enjoying a successful and lucrative career in itinerant coaching in Saudi Arabia, said he acted impulsively when the news broke. He contacted Jean-Michel Aulas, one of the most influential people in French football and a member of the French federation’s board of directors. Renard met him a decade ago, when he almost became the coach of Lyon’s men’s team. He told Aulas that he wanted to be considered for the opening.
It promised a significant change in his career. Renard says that by the time he picked up the phone to text Aulas, he had only considered coaching women once: a thrill that came when he watched France play in the last World Cup. He said his interest then lasted “probably for a few seconds.”
But now that his first interest in coaching a women’s team has been reciprocated, he faces a problem. To accept the job, he needs permission from football officials in Saudi Arabia, where he is signing, and he will have to accept a substantial pay cut. Renard smiled and explained that the job in Saudi Arabia pays at least “20 times” what he earns coaching the French women’s team.
“When you’re in Saudi Arabia, that’s not the reality,” he said. “So sometimes it’s good to get into practice.”
Months later, Renard said he still couldn’t explain why he threw his hat into the ring, before looking down at the French badge on the left chest of his tracksuit. Having coached five other national teams, he said, the opportunity to lead the country where he was born was clearly a big one. But even then, some things, Renard said, cannot be explained. “I still don’t know exactly why I decided,” he said.
Renard is optimistic about his rare feat of coaching two World Cups in one year. “The most important thing is not to participate in two World Cups in six months,” he said. “It’s to do something” in them.
Of all the teams Renard has coached, his current team is ranked highest, ranking 5th in the world – a high achievement it has maintained despite never reaching the semi-finals of a major tournament. Renard says it is now possible.
“We have to believe in ourselves,” he said.
He was ordered to reach the semi-finals, he said, a goal he accepted. “We can’t come here when you’re fifth in the world and say, ‘Oh, no, a quarterfinal is enough.’ Are not. We need to have a very high challenge. So our first goal is to reach the semi-finals. Then we’ll talk about other things.”
Renard has only a few months to mend a fractured squad, inculcate the teamwork his banner requires and he believes his players need to win what he considers the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history.
During his first training camp, Renard told the team he didn’t care what happened in the past. He doesn’t want to litigate past matches, past feuds, past grievances – all of which have made the atmosphere in the camp so toxic that stars like Wendie Renard say they don’t want to play for France at all. But he couldn’t avoid facing one final controversy before the tournament.
Kheira Hamraoui, an experienced and talented midfielder and regular player for the national team, was attacked by masked men in 2021 after a dinner with her club, Paris Saint-Germain. The explosion affected both the club and the national team, with a former teammate on both teams, Aminata Diallo, accused of taking part in the attackand others were angered by Hamraoui’s initial claims that they or people they knew were also involved.
Strange circumstances have cast a shadow over the national team for more than two years. Faced with reviving it at the French camp, Renard said he decided not to take Hamraoui to the World Cup and told her in a face-to-face meeting why she wasn’t selected.
He said he had told Hamraoui she would not start, and a place on the bench would be unsettling for an experienced player like her. “I think for this type of player, you start from the first 11 or it’s very difficult to sit on the bench,” he said. “We cannot advance in a competition if we do not have a great team spirit.”
Renard admits that not all of his choices are correct. But he says he has been upfront with his players about what he knows and what he doesn’t.
“I said to the girls: ‘Maybe I’ll make some mistakes. If I say something wrong, just let me know.’ But step by step, you learn to manage,” he said.
For now, his players say they’re hearing the right things. Midfielder Grace Geyoro said: “He always pushed us to be the best version of ourselves. a recent interview. “As long as everyone has the same vision and is willing to go in the same direction, then we can achieve something great,” said Wendie Renard.
The World Cup comes with the strongest focus on women’s football in the sport’s history, with teams and players using the platform to promote more recognition and compensation for their efforts. FIFA, football’s global governing body, has tripled its prize money from four years ago, to $110 million. Its critics have said that the new number is not far enough, that it should equal the total prize pool of $440 million given to men at the 2022 World Cup in 2022.
Hervé Renard acknowledges the progress women’s football has made, especially since the previous World Cup. But, perhaps controversially, he said that “women still have to be a little patient” when it comes to paying.
As interest continues to rise, so does the earning potential, he said. But the commercial reality, he said, is reflected in the various sales of the sports, and he offers an analogy to prove his point.
“If you have a restaurant that serves 1,000 meals in the evening and a restaurant that serves 300 meals, it’s not the same thing,” he said. “At the end of the night in the register, the amount is not the same. So is football. It’s business.”
