The banner hangs just below the central staircase of the elegant hotel, which was taken over by the France women’s national team for the World Cup. Hervé Renard wanted to make sure no one on his team could miss it.
The motivating words emblazoned on it are typical of the kind of positive messages that teams gather ahead of major sporting tournaments. But for this French side, and for Renard, their well-travelled coach, those words hold a special meaning after a time many in the team would prefer to forget.
“Only team spirit,” it says, “can make your dreams come true.”
Renard used the phrase when he first met the French side earlier this year, just months before the World Cup. It wasn’t long before he was chosen to replace sacked coach Corinne Diacre, but even then he knew it was a message that could resonate with a side that even their own federation had concluded was irreparably ‘broken’.
“We lacked unity,” Renard said in an interview on a sunny terrace outside the team’s base camp last week. That was perhaps the biggest understatement in women’s football.
France came to Australia this month as World Cup favorites on the mend. Torn by bitter feuds, it has lost players, welcomed them back, and then lost them again in recent months. It changed coaches, approaches and tactics. And now Renard, a respected 54-year-old with a successful resume at the men’s World Cup but no previous experience coaching women, has been asked to make it to at least the semi-finals.
He started the process, he said, by speaking openly about what he didn’t know.
“Everything was new to me because I didn’t know how to deal with girls in women’s football,” he said. “I was lucky because a lot of people in our team were already involved in 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) had announced that she would not take part in the World Cup for reasons of her mental health. Two other stars had followed suit, saying they would not return unless there was a change in leadership of the team.
There had already been controversy under Diacre, the coach at the time, but nothing was quite as serious or existential. A mood of rebellion had turned into open rebellion.
With the World Cup looming, the French Football Federation reacted and, after a brief investigation, announced that Diacre had to go. The break between her and the team has become so significant, according to the association, that she has “reached a point of no return”.
Hervé Renard, who is enjoying a successful and lucrative stint in his hiking coaching career in Saudi Arabia, said he acted on impulse when the news broke. He contacted Jean-Michel Aulas, one of the most influential men in French football and a board member of the French FA. Renard met him a decade ago when he narrowly missed out on becoming manager of the Lyon men’s team. He told Aulas that he wanted to be considered for the opening.
It promised a significant change in course for his career. Renard said that until the moment he picked up his phone to text Aulas, the only time he had thought about coaching women was a fantasy trip that came to mind while watching France play at the last World Cup. At the time, he said, his interest lasted “maybe just a few seconds”.
But now that his interest in coaching a women’s team for the first time has been reciprocated, he faced a problem. To take the job, he needed permission from football officials in Saudi Arabia, where he was under contract, and suffered a significant pay cut. The Saudi job, Renard explained with a smile, pays at least “twenty times” what he would earn coaching the French women.
“When you’re in Saudi Arabia, that’s not quite the reality,” he said. “So sometimes it’s good to face reality.”
Months later, Renard said he still couldn’t quite explain why he threw his hat in the ring before glancing at the French coat of arms on the left chest of his tracksuit. Having coached five other national teams, the chance to lead his native country was clearly a huge draw, he said. But even then, Renard said, some things couldn’t be explained. “I still don’t know exactly why I made the decision,” he said.
Renard is confident in his rare achievement as a coach at two World Cups in the same year. “The most important thing is not to take part in two world championships in half a year,” he said. “It’s about doing something” in them.
Of all the teams Renard has coached, his current squad is the highest-ranked at fifth in the world – a high profile he has maintained despite never making it past the semi-finals of any major tournament. Renard said that is now possible.
“We have to believe in ourselves,” he said.
He was tasked with reaching the semifinals, he said, a goal he accepted. “We can’t come here when you’re fifth in the world and say, ‘Oh no, a quarter-final will do.’ No. We have to face a very high challenge. So our first goal is to reach the semi-finals. After that we talk about other things.”
Renard has had just months to mend a fragmented squad, instill the team spirit his banner demands and believe his players need to win what he believes will be the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history.
In his first training camp, Renard told the team that he didn’t care about the past. He didn’t want to argue about past games, feuds, grievances – all the things that had so poisoned the atmosphere at camp that stars like Wendie Renard said they’d rather not play for France at all. But he couldn’t avoid facing one last controversy before the tournament.
Kheira Hamraoui, an experienced and talented midfielder and national team regular, was attacked by masked men after a dinner with her club Paris Saint-Germain in 2021. The fallout had lingering effects for both club and national team: a former team-mate from both teams, Aminata Diallo, was charged with involvement in the attack and others were angered by Hamraoui’s initial claims that she or people they knew were also involved.
The bizarre episode followed the national team for more than two years. With sentiment revived in the French camp, Renard said he decided against bringing Hamraoui to the World Cup and in a face-to-face meeting explained to her why she would not be selected.
He said he told Hamraoui she would not start and that being on the bench would be troubling for a player of her experience. “I think for that kind of player you start in the first eleven otherwise it’s very difficult to sit on the bench,” he said. “We can’t advance in a competition if we don’t have a fantastic team spirit.”
Renard acknowledged that not every decision he makes will be the right one. But he said he was upfront with his players about what he knew and didn’t know.
“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 deal with it,” he said.
His players are saying they’re hearing the right things at the moment. “He keeps pushing us to be the best version of ourselves,” midfielder Grace Geyoro said in a recent interview. Wendie Renard said: “As long as everyone has the same vision and is willing to pull together, we can achieve something great.”
The World Cup comes with the strongest focus on women’s football in the history of the sport, and teams and players are using the platform to push for more recognition and rewards for their efforts. FIFA, the world governing body of football, has more than tripled the prize money to $110 million compared to four years ago. His detractors said the new figure doesn’t go far enough and that it should match the $440 million prize pool allotted to men at the 2022 World Cup.
Hervé Renard recognized the progress women’s football has made, particularly since the last World Cup. But perhaps controversially, he said that “women still have to be a bit patient” when it comes to pay.
As interest continues to grow, so will the earning potential, he said. But the commercial reality, he said, is reflected in the disparate earnings of the sports, and he offered an analogy to get his point across.
“If you have a restaurant with 1,000 meals a night and one with 300, it’s not the same,” he said. “At the end of the night, the cash register doesn’t show the same amount. It’s the same with football. It’s a business.”