Renard, Wendie

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    Can This Man Fix France’s Women’s Team?

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    Hervé Renard has led two men’s teams to the World Cup. But in taking over his country’s talented but troubled women’s squad, he may have his toughest job yet.The banner hangs just beneath the central staircase of the elegant hotel that has been taken over by the France women’s national team for the World Cup. Hervé Renard wanted to make sure no one in his squad could miss it.The motivational words emblazoned across it are typical of the type of positive messaging teams rally around before major sporting tournaments. But for this French squad, and for Renard, its well-traveled coach, the words carry extra significance after a period many on the team would prefer to forget.“Only team spirit,” it reads, “can make you realize your dreams.”Renard used the phrase the first time he met the French squad earlier this year, only months before the World Cup. That was not long after he was chosen to replace the fired coach Corinne Diacre, but even then he knew it was a message that might resonate with a team that even its own federation had concluded was “fractured” beyond repair.“We were missing unity,” Renard said in an interview on a sunny terrace in front of the team’s base camp last week. It was perhaps the biggest understatement in women’s soccer.France has arrived in Australia this month as a World Cup favorite on the mend. Torn apart by bitter feuds, it has in recent months lost players, welcomed them back, and then lost them again. It has changed coaches, changed approaches and changed tactics. And now it has asked Renard, a respected 54-year-old with a decorated men’s World Cup résumé but no previous experience coaching women, to carry it at least as far as the semifinals.He started the process, he said, by being open about what he did not know.“For me everything was new because I did it know women’s football, how to manage the girls,” he said. “I was lucky because on our staff a lot of people were already working with women’s football. So I was listening.”What he inherited was a talented team in disarray. Its longtime leader, Wendie Renard (who is not related to Hervé), had announced that she would not play in the World Cup to preserve her mental health. Two other stars had followed suit, saying they would not return unless there was a change in leadership of the team.France’s longtime captain, Wendie Renard, had said she would skip the World Cup rather than play for the team’s former coach. William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere had been previous controversies under Diacre, the coach at the time, but nothing quite so serious or existential. A mutinous mood had turned into an open rebellion.Faced with a crisis as the World Cup loomed, the French soccer federation acted, announcing after a brief investigation that Diacre had to go. The rupture between her and the team, the federation said, had become so significant that it “has reached a point of no return.”Hervé Renard, enjoying a successful and lucrative stop on an itinerant coaching career in Saudi Arabia, said he acted on impulse as the news broke. He contacted Jean-Michel Aulas, one of the most influential men in French soccer and a member of the French federation’s board. Renard met him a decade ago, when he narrowly missed out on becoming 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 of course for his career. Renard said that until the moment he picked up his phone to message Aulas, he had only once before considered coaching women: a flight of fancy that came as he watched France play in the last World Cup. His interest then, he said, had lasted “maybe just for a few seconds.”But now that his interest in coaching a women’s team for the first time was reciprocated, he faced a problem. To accept the job, he would need the permission of soccer officials in Saudi Arabia, where he was under contract, and he would need to accept a significant pay cut. The Saudi job, Renard explained with a smile, paid at least “20 times” what he would earn coaching France’s women.“When you are in Saudi Arabia it’s not exactly the reality,” he said. “So sometimes it’s good to go to reality.”Months later, Renard said he still cannot quite explain why he tossed his hat in the ring, before looking down at the French crest on the left breast of his tracksuit. Having coached five other national teams, he said, the chance to lead the country of his birth was clearly a major draw. But even then, some things, Renard said, cannot be explained. “I still don’t know why exactly I decided,” he said.Renard’s most recent World Cup experience came as the coach of Saudi Arabia, which was the only team to beat Argentina, the eventual champion, at the 2022 championship in Qatar.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesRenard is sanguine about his rare feat of coaching in two World Cups within a 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 squad is the highest ranked, at fifth in the world — a lofty profile it has maintained despite never making it beyond the semifinals of a major tournament. Renard said that is now possible.“We have to believe in ourselves,” he said.He is under orders to reach the semifinals, he said, a target he has accepted. “We can’t come here when you are fifth in the world and say, ‘Oh, no, a quarterfinal will be enough.’ No. We need to have a very a high challenge. So our first target is to reach the semifinals. Then afterward we will talk about other things.”Renard has had only months to mend a fractured squad, to inculcate the team spirit that his banner demands and that he believes his players need to win in what he considers the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history.In his first training camp, Renard told the team he was not interested in what happened in the past. He did not want to litigate past games, past feuds, past grievances — all the things that had made the atmosphere in the camp so poisonous that stars like Wendie Renard said they would rather not play for France at all. But he could not avoid confronting one final pretournament controversy.Kheira Hamraoui, an experienced and gifted midfielder and a regular on the national team, was attacked in 2021 by masked men following a dinner with her club, Paris Saint-Germain. The fallout had reverberations for both the club and the national team, with a former teammate on both teams, Aminata Diallo, charged with involvement in the attack, and others angered by Hamraoui’s initial claims that they or people they knew were also involved.The bizarre episode shadowed the national team for more than two years. Faced with reviving it in the France camp, Renard said he decided against bringing Hamraoui to the World Cup, and told her in a face-to-face meeting why she would not be selected.He said he told Hamraoui that she was not going to start, and that a place on the bench would be unsettling for a player of her experience. “I think for this kind of player, you start in the first 11 or it is very difficult to sit on the bench,” he said. “We can’t go forward in a competition if we don’t have a fantastic team spirit.”Renard acknowledged that not every choice he makes will be the correct one. But he said he has been frank with his players about what he knew, and what he did not.“I said to the girls: ‘Maybe I will make some mistakes. If I say something wrong, just let me know.’ But step by step, you learn how to manage,” he said.His players, for the moment, say they are hearing the right things. “He keeps pushing us to be the best versions of ourselves,” midfielder Grace Geyoro said in a recent interview. Said Wendie Renard: “As long as everyone has the same vision and a willingness to pull in the same direction, then we can achieve something great.”France’s women’s team practicing in Sydney on Saturday.Carl Recine/ReutersThe World Cup takes place with the sharpest focus on women’s soccer in the sport’s history, and with teams and players using the platform to push for greater recognition and compensation for their efforts. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has more than tripled prize money from four years ago, to $110 million. Its critics have said that new figure does not go far enough, that it should be the same as the $440 million prize pool awarded to men at the 2022 World Cup in 2022.Hervé Renard acknowledged the progress women’s soccer has made, particularly since the last World Cup. But, perhaps controversially, he said that “women still have to be a little bit patient” when it comes to pay.As interest continues to grow, he said, so will the earning potential. But commercial reality, he said, was reflected in the sports’ differing revenues, and he put forward an analogy to make his point.“If you have one restaurant with 1,000 meals in the evening and one with 300, it’s not the same,” he said. “At the end of the night in the register, it’s not the same amount. Football it’s the same. It’s business.” More

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      Women’s World Cup Contenders

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      The Women’s World Cup, which opens this week, is the biggest in its 32-year history, but it may also be the most open field the tournament has seen.While plenty of the 32 teams descending on Australia and New Zealand probably have modest ambitions for the next month, it is not a stretch to say that almost half of the field might regard themselves as serious title contenders. (Some more accurately than others.) These 10 countries are the most likely to stick around all the way until the end.United StatesForward Trinity Rodman is one of 14 U.S. players headed to their first World Cup.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTwo things can be true at once. By common consensus, Vlatko Andonovski’s team arrived in New Zealand as the favorite to win the tournament. It has the aura of experience, the dazzling jolt of youth and the deep bedrock of talent to lift a third straight World Cup. It has a psychological edge, too: It has been the game’s superpower for so long that respect can manifest as awe.At the same time, the undisputed primacy the United States has enjoyed for more than a decade has never been more fragile. There is a risk that this squad will fail the Goldilocks test: Some players are too old, some are too young, and so perhaps none are just right. Europe’s major nations have closed the gap. In the space of a month last year, the Americans lost to England, Spain and Germany. The United States has the squad to emerge as champion. But for the first time in some time, it is not alone in that.EnglandRachel Daly started at left back in the Euros last summer. Now she is England’s most potent striker.David Rogers/Getty ImagesExpectation hangs heavy on Sarina Wiegman’s England. The Lionesses won the European Championship on home soil last summer, the team’s first major honor, and followed that with a victory in the Finalissima — a game between the European and South American champions — earlier this year. Winning the World Cup would be the natural conclusion to a trajectory that has been on a steep upward curve for 10 years.Fate, though, has intervened. Wiegman has lost her captain, Leah Williamson; her most creative player, Fran Kirby; and her most potent attacking threat, Beth Mead, to injury. Millie Bright made the squad but is still, strictly speaking, recovering from knee surgery. Wiegman is an astute enough coach — and she has enough talent at her disposal — to disguise those losses. But she will be doing so on the fly.AustraliaSam Kerr will shoulder the hopes of one of the host nations.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is difficult not to see the co-host less as “Australia” and more as “Sam Kerr and Guests.” At 30, Kerr, the Chelsea striker, may well be the finest player in the world. She is a totem for her country. She is the face of the tournament, the person expected to deliver what she has referred to as a “Cathy Freeman moment.” She is the star on which Australia’s hopes hang.That assessment is not quite true. Tony Gustavsson’s squad is drawn largely from the major leagues of Europe and the N.W.S.L. In Caitlin Foord, Hayley Raso and Alanna Kennedy, the supporting cast is a strong one. Its momentum, too, is considerable: Australia has won eight of its last nine games, including a milestone victory against England. Kerr will have to deliver, of course, but she is far from alone.The NetherlandsThe Netherlands lost to the United States in the World Cup final in 2019. Its path runs through the Americans again.Rob Engelaar/EPA, via ShutterstockIn 2019, the Dutch emerged as the standard-bearer for Europe’s coming force, an advertisement for the game’s shifting power base. They fell agonizingly short, losing to the United States in the final. Progress since then has been patchy, as they have lost Wiegman, who left to coach England, before falling in the quarterfinals of the European Championship last summer.The core of the team that made the final four years ago — Danielle van de Donk, Jackie Groenen, Jill Roord, Lieke Martens — remains, and the Dutch have the talent to make a deep run once more. Two things stand in their way: the absence of striker Vivianne Miedema through injury and an unfortunate draw for the group stage. The Dutch face the Americans early; defeat in that game will most likely mean a tougher route for the remainder of their stay.CanadaChristine Sinclair has played 323 games for Canada.LM Otero/Associated PressThe Canadians have made precious little impact on the latter rounds of the World Cup in the last two decades, extending their stay beyond the first knockout round only once. Yet even that, on home soil in 2015, lasted only until the quarterfinals.In many ways, it is hard to see that changing this time around. Christine Sinclair is 40; Janine Beckie is out, another victim of women’s soccer’s A.C.L. epidemic; Canada has won only one of its last five games and has been drawn in the same group as Australia. But there is a resilience to this team that should not be underappreciated: It is only two years, after all, since Canada — completely overlooked then as now — won gold at the Tokyo Olympics.BrazilMarta is headed to her sixth World Cup with Brazil.Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersOn some level, Brazil’s stay in this World Cup will be seen as Marta’s valedictory tour: a sixth and (presumably) final tournament turned into a lap of honor for a 37-year-old player regarded by some as the best of all time.It is hard, certainly, to believe that it will end with Marta’s repeating Lionel Messi’s trick and finally winning the honor that would mean more to her than any other. Brazil’s squad is not as strong as previous editions, and none of them were strong enough to overcome the superpowers of North America and Europe, either. Still, in Pia Sundhage, Brazil has a canny, adroit coach, and the likes of Debinha, Kerolin and Geyse mean Marta may not have to bear the load alone.SpainAlexia Putellas of Spain is the reigning world player of the year.Steve Luciano/Associated PressMore than anyone — even England — Spain should be the biggest threat to the United States’ crown this summer. Its national team is, after all, based largely on the Barcelona team that has become the dominant force in European club soccer. Alexia Putellas, while most likely not fully recovered from the knee injury that kept her out of the Euros last year, is the reigning world player of the year. Spain has lost just once in a year.The problem is that Spain has been engulfed by civil war between the players and the country’s soccer federation since last summer. Though an uneasy truce has been called — allowing some of the 15 players who had demanded the dismissal of the coach, Jorge Vilda, to return — the effects are still being felt. A dozen players are still missing, and Vilda must find a way to instill a team spirit in a squad consisting of both rebels and their replacements.FranceWendie Renard, center, and Kadidiatou Diani had threatened not to play for France under its former coach.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Spanish might have had the least ideal preparation for a major tournament, but kudos to the French for giving them a run for their money. Corinne Diacre, the longstanding coach who had lost the faith of a considerable number of her players, was finally ousted in March. She was replaced by Hervé Renard, a globe-trotting coach of some renown but absolutely no experience in the women’s game.He has, at least, restored some familiar faces to the squad: Wendie Renard and Kadidiatou Diani, both of whom had refused to play under Diacre, are back. Amandine Henry, the vastly experienced midfielder, had been recalled, too, only to suffer a calf injury that will keep her out of the tournament. France’s hopes, now, rest on the new coach’s being able to get the best out of a team he has only just encountered.GermanyLena Oberdorf and Germany will enter the World Cup off a run of puzzling results.Christof Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf anything at all is certain about this tournament, it is that the Germans will reach the quarterfinals. In eight attempts, they have never failed to do so, and given a kindly group draw — Morocco, Colombia and South Korea — there is little reason to believe they will not make the last eight again.Whether Coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg can steer her team any further, though, is open to question. Germany has a well-balanced squad — two outstanding goalkeepers, the emerging star power of Lena Oberdorf, the creativity of Lina Magull, the goals of Svenja Huth and Alexandra Popp — and finished as runner-up in last summer’s European Championship. But its form is sputtering: It has lost to Brazil and Zambia in the last couple of months and just squeezed past Vietnam in a warm-up match last month.SwedenKosovare Asllani and Sweden finished third at the 2019 World Cup and second at the Tokyo Olympics.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via ShutterstockNobody ever thinks about Sweden. Sweden might have one silver and three bronze medals to show for its eight previous World Cups, and it might be a reliable force in the European Championship, but the operating assumption is always that Sweden is not a genuine contender.It is worth pointing out, then, that Sweden not only has the likes of Fridolina Rolfo, Stina Blackstenius and Hanna Bennison to call on, but that it made the semifinals of the Euros last year, and it swatted aside the United States on the way to the Olympic final two years ago. Sweden is a threat. But nobody ever thinks about Sweden. More

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      Hervé Renard Set to Coach France at Women’s World Cup

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      Renard has vast experience in Africa and led Saudi Arabia at last year’s World Cup. But he has never coached a women’s team.PARIS — Hervé Renard, a French coach with vast experience in international soccer but none leading a women’s team, was set to be hired to lead a France squad that will be among the favorites at the Women’s World Cup in July.France is expected to announce Renard’s hiring by the end of the week, just over two weeks after the country’s soccer federation fired its longtime women’s coach, Corinne Diacre, in the face of player revolt.Renard, 54, most recently coached Saudi Arabia’s men’s team but announced his departure on Tuesday, hours after the Saudi soccer federation said it had agreed to a French federation request to end his contract immediately.The French soccer federation made no announcement that it had hired Renard, but the Saudi federation’s president, Yasser Al-Misehal, essentially confirmed a deal was in the works when he told a Saudi sports channel on Tuesday night that Renard had been offered the France post and that the coach “expressed his desire to take this opportunity.”Renard’s arrival could be a welcome breath of fresh air for Les Bleues, as the French women’s team is known, but also for the embattled French federation, which will be eager for a fresh start after a leadership change as well as a series of internal conflicts that were threatening to tear apart its star-studded and trophy-chasing women’s team.Time is short: France’s players will have only a matter of months, and a handful of exhibition games, to adapt to Renard before they run out for their Women’s World Cup opener against Jamaica on July 23 in Sydney, Australia.But Renard also will have only a short window to persuade his players that he can adapt his style to them, and to the women’s game. While he has decades of coaching experience in multiple countries, he has not previously coached women at the professional or international level. At least one prominent player agent said that would not be a problem.“As someone who’s known for leading men, I’m sure he’ll have no problem leading women,” Sonia Souid, an agent who represents several players on the French women’s team, said in an interview last week. Souid suggested that Renard’s transition could be seamless as long as he can make the players believe they can succeed.“The real challenge is that Renard will be expected to have immediate results,” she said. “That’s difficult for any coach.”Renard’s most immediate task will be to heal the wounds of a “fractured” group, as the federation called its women’s team in the communiqué that announced Diacre’s departure. Fissures between Diacre and some of her best players broke for good in February, when several top players, including the team captain Wendie Renard and the Paris-St.-Germain star Marie-Antoinette Katoto, announced that they would leave the team and refuse future calls to international duty amid disagreements with the management of Diacre, which they denounced as “nowhere near top-level requirements.”Wendie Renard announced on social media that she had chosen to prioritize her “mental health” by quitting the French team. Two weeks later, Diacre was fired.Hervé Renard has a reputation as an itinerant leader who extracts results from his players and then moves on. He has never stayed more than four years on the same coaching bench in a career that has taken him to Africa, the Middle East, England’s fourth division, France’s Ligue 1 and to local teams in the Algerian and Vietnamese championships.Sharp-jawed and favoring crisp white dress shirts on the sideline, Renard attracted attention and headlines during last year’s World Cup in Qatar, where he led an unheralded Saudi Arabia team stocked with domestic-based players to a stunning group-stage victory over Argentina.A video of an impassioned speech he delivered to his players at halftime of that game racked up millions of views on social media, but also offered a glimpse into both his methods, his passion and his no-nonsense coaching style.His first look at his new team could come within days: France will gather for a training camp next week ahead of a set of friendly matches against Colombia and Canada in early April.As he prepares for the World Cup, Renard will have to work quickly to merge a new generation of talents like Katoto with an older group of players whose international careers came to an abrupt end under Diacre. That latter group includes not only Renard and goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi but also midfielder Amandine Henry, who remains a mainstay of the French powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais Féminin at the age of 33. Henry has not played for France in more than two years, and was left off the national team’s roster by Diacre for last summer’s European Championship in England.That tournament, like so many others, ended in disappointment and frustration for France. Despite its talent, it has never reached the final of a major championship like the World Cup or the Euros or claimed an Olympic medal in its 50 years of existence.Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More