The banner hangs simply beneath the central staircase of the elegant lodge that has been taken over by the France ladies’s nationwide workforce for the World Cup. Hervé Renard wished to ensure nobody in his squad might miss it.
The motivational phrases emblazoned throughout it are typical of the kind of constructive messaging groups rally round earlier than main sporting tournaments. However for this French squad, and for Renard, its well-traveled coach, the phrases carry additional significance after a interval many on the workforce would like to overlook.
“Solely workforce spirit,” it reads, “could make you understand your goals.”
Renard used the phrase the primary time he met the French squad earlier this yr, solely months earlier than the World Cup. That was not lengthy after he was chosen to exchange the fired coach Corinne Diacre, however even then he knew it was a message which may resonate with a workforce that even its personal federation had concluded was “fractured” past restore.
“We had been lacking unity,” Renard stated in an interview on a sunny terrace in entrance of the workforce’s base camp final week. It was maybe the largest understatement in ladies’s soccer.
France has arrived in Australia this month as a World Cup favourite on the mend. Torn aside by bitter feuds, it has in current months misplaced gamers, welcomed them again, after which misplaced them once more. It has modified coaches, modified approaches and adjusted ways. And now it has requested Renard, a revered 54-year-old with a adorned males’s World Cup résumé however no earlier expertise teaching ladies, to hold it no less than so far as the semifinals.
He began the method, he stated, by being open about what he didn’t know.
“For me every little thing was new as a result of I didn’t know ladies’s soccer, the best way to handle the ladies,” he stated. “I used to be fortunate as a result of on our workers lots of people had been already working with ladies’s soccer. So I used to be listening.”
What he inherited was a gifted workforce in disarray. Its longtime chief, Wendie Renard (who will not be associated to Hervé), had introduced that she wouldn’t play within the World Cup to protect her psychological well being. Two different stars had adopted swimsuit, saying they’d not return except there was a change in management of the workforce.
There had been earlier controversies beneath Diacre, the coach on the time, however nothing fairly so critical or existential. A mutinous temper had was an open revolt.
Confronted with a disaster because the World Cup loomed, the French soccer federation acted, saying after a short investigation that Diacre needed to go. The rupture between her and the workforce, the federation stated, had turn into so vital that it “has reached some extent of no return.”
Hervé Renard, having fun with a profitable and profitable cease on an itinerant teaching profession in Saudi Arabia, stated he acted on impulse because the information broke. He contacted Jean-Michel Aulas, some of the influential males in French soccer and a member of the French federation’s board. Renard met him a decade in the past, when he narrowly missed out on changing into the coach of Lyon’s males’s workforce. He instructed Aulas that he wished to be thought-about for the opening.
It promised a big change in fact for his profession. Renard stated that till the second he picked up his telephone to message Aulas, he had solely as soon as earlier than thought-about teaching ladies: a flight of fancy that got here as he watched France play within the final World Cup. His curiosity then, he stated, had lasted “perhaps only for just a few seconds.”
However now that his curiosity in teaching a ladies’s workforce for the primary time was reciprocated, he confronted an issue. To just accept the job, he would wish the permission of soccer officers in Saudi Arabia, the place he was beneath contract, and he would wish to simply accept a big pay lower. The Saudi job, Renard defined with a smile, paid no less than “20 instances” what he would earn teaching France’s ladies.
“When you’re in Saudi Arabia it’s not precisely the fact,” he stated. “So typically it’s good to go to actuality.”
Months later, Renard stated he nonetheless can’t fairly clarify why he tossed his hat within the ring, earlier than trying down on the French crest on the left breast of his tracksuit. Having coached 5 different nationwide groups, he stated, the prospect to steer the nation of his beginning was clearly a significant draw. However even then, some issues, Renard stated, can’t be defined. “I nonetheless don’t know why precisely I made a decision,” he stated.
Renard is sanguine about his uncommon feat of teaching in two World Cups inside a yr. “Crucial factor is to not take part in two World Cups in six months,” he stated. “It’s to do one thing” in them.
Of all of the groups Renard has coached, his present squad is the very best ranked, at fifth on this planet — a lofty profile it has maintained regardless of by no means making it past the semifinals of a significant match. Renard stated that’s now potential.
“We now have to consider in ourselves,” he stated.
He’s beneath orders to succeed in the semifinals, he stated, a goal he has accepted. “We are able to’t come right here when you’re fifth on this planet and say, ‘Oh, no, a quarterfinal will probably be sufficient.’ No. We have to have a really a excessive problem. So our first goal is to succeed in the semifinals. Then afterward we are going to speak about different issues.”
Renard has had solely months to fix a fractured squad, to inculcate the workforce spirit that his banner calls for and that he believes his gamers must win in what he considers probably the most aggressive Ladies’s World Cup in historical past.
In his first coaching camp, Renard instructed the workforce he was not thinking about what occurred prior to now. He didn’t need to litigate previous video games, previous feuds, previous grievances — all of the issues that had made the environment within the camp so toxic that stars like Wendie Renard stated they’d fairly not play for France in any respect. However he couldn’t keep away from confronting one closing pretournament controversy.
Kheira Hamraoui, an skilled and gifted midfielder and a daily on the nationwide workforce, was attacked in 2021 by masked males following a dinner together with her membership, Paris Saint-Germain. The fallout had reverberations for each the membership and the nationwide workforce, with a former teammate on each groups, Aminata Diallo, charged with involvement within the assault, and others angered by Hamraoui’s preliminary claims that they or folks they knew had been additionally concerned.
The weird episode shadowed the nationwide workforce for greater than two years. Confronted with reviving it within the France camp, Renard stated he determined towards bringing Hamraoui to the World Cup, and instructed her in a face-to-face assembly why she wouldn’t be chosen.
He stated he instructed Hamraoui that she was not going to begin, and that a spot on the bench can be unsettling for a participant of her expertise. “I believe for this sort of participant, you begin within the first 11 or it is vitally tough to sit down on the bench,” he stated. “We are able to’t go ahead in a contest if we don’t have a implausible workforce spirit.”
Renard acknowledged that not each alternative he makes would be the right one. However he stated he has been frank together with his gamers about what he knew, and what he didn’t.
“I stated to the ladies: ‘Perhaps I’ll make some errors. If I say one thing improper, simply let me know.’ However step-by-step, you discover ways to handle,” he stated.
His gamers, for the second, say they’re listening to the fitting issues. “He retains pushing us to be the very best variations of ourselves,” midfielder Grace Geyoro stated in a current interview. Stated Wendie Renard: “So long as everybody has the identical imaginative and prescient and a willingness to tug in the identical path, then we are able to obtain one thing nice.”
The World Cup takes place with the sharpest deal with ladies’s soccer within the sport’s historical past, and with groups and gamers utilizing the platform to push for higher recognition and compensation for his or her efforts. FIFA, soccer’s international governing physique, has greater than tripled prize cash from 4 years in the past, to $110 million. Its critics have stated that new determine doesn’t go far sufficient, that it needs to be the identical because the $440 million prize pool awarded to males on the 2022 World Cup in 2022.
Hervé Renard acknowledged the progress ladies’s soccer has made, notably for the reason that final World Cup. However, maybe controversially, he stated that “ladies nonetheless need to be slightly bit affected person” with regards to pay.
As curiosity continues to develop, he stated, so will the incomes potential. However business actuality, he stated, was mirrored within the sports activities’ differing revenues, and he put ahead an analogy to make his level.
“When you have one restaurant with 1,000 meals within the night and one with 300, it’s not the identical,” he stated. “On the finish of the night time within the register, it’s not the identical quantity. Soccer it’s the identical. It’s enterprise.”