A new adventure begins for the football globetrotter.
After eight years away from France, Hervé Renard is once again packing his bags in France.
He has the heavy task of taking over from Corinne Deacon at the head of the women's team.
“
We hire a coach on the theme of ''how to win the World Cup and the Olympic Games in Paris which take place twelve months later''.
Everything that has just happened will soon be nothing more than an unfortunate episode
,” Jean-Michel Aulas recently confided to Le
Figaro
.
Maximum pressure for the native of Aix-les-Bains.
To discover
The complete calendar of the Blues
Former player, Hervé Renard has been on the benches of world football for almost 25 years.
Coach at heart - he has trained six countries - the former resident of AS Cannes will lead a European nation for the first time, he who has just returned from a four-year exodus to Saudi Arabia.
Eliminated in the first round of the last World Cup, the former central defender remains the only coach to have beaten Leo Messi's Argentina in Qatar.
Even Didier Deschamps broke his teeth there.
Since this resounding exploit in mondovision, the name of Hervé Renard has circulated widely.
According to our information, the latter would have refused to take the reins of the Polish selection, he who nevertheless has origins from this country.
According to
RTBF
, he was on Belgium's shortlist to replace Roberto Martinez.
A modest playing career
Like the majority of coaches and selectors in position on the benches of professional football, Hervé Renard was first a player before embracing the career of manager.
The native of Aix-les-Bains in Savoie started playing football at an early age, before landing at the AS Cannes training center at the age of 14.
There, he rubbed shoulders with the biggest names in French football.
“
In the training center, I knew Zinédine Zidane, I played with Didier Deschamps in the France cadet team
“confided the main interested party in our columns before flying to Qatar last November.
After seven years in Cannes, direction Vallauris (1991-1997), still in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Finally, a last freelance at SC Draguignan, in the Var.
More than 200 games in total, but only one in the first division.
Seasoned breeder
Since taking up his coaching duties in 1999, Hervé Renard has settled down in eight different countries.
He notably managed five different selections, starting with Zambia between 2008 and 2010, before a quick hook by Angola and the club USM Alger, and returning to Zambia between 2011 and 2013. The Frenchman won his two first trophies: an African Cup of Nations in 2012, before the COSAFA Cup the following year.
Then followed an experience in Côte d'Ivoire, a selection with which the coach won the CAN again.
He is the only one to have won this competition twice, with two different nations.
“
I would never have imagined one day coaching an African team,
explains Hervé Renard to the
FIFA website
.
Fate took me there.
I participated for the first time in the Africa Cup of Nations in 2008 and after that I played in six more.
Winning it was incredible and yes, it's a good record.
You have to experience it to believe it.
It is thanks to every Zambian and every Ivorian that I managed to achieve this feat.
It's something I will never forget.
” After long experiences at most two years, the trainer on the move takes the time to settle down.
First in Morocco to lead the Atlas Lions between 2015 and 2019, before joining the Saudi selection eight days after leaving the North African country.
Yet under contract until 2027 with Saudi Arabia, Hervé Renard left his post on Tuesday to take over the management of the French women's team.
Always decked out in his white shirt
Hervé Renard is French class wherever he goes.
Always wearing a white shirt on his back, the coach has made it his trademark for more than a decade.
In 2012, he explained his reasons to the
BBC
.
“
In 2010, we won our first game against Tunisia and I was wearing a white shirt.
The next game we lost to Cameroon and I had put on a blue shirt
.”
Superstition was born.
Hervé Renard when he coached Zambia in 2012. Christian Liewig
A chilled lover of France, despite a relationship that is not always easy
Hervé Renard has forged a reputation far from France.
His few - and short - experiences in France have always turned sour.
A first attempt on the AS Cherbourg bench between 2005 and 2007, after mixed adventures in the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
Two seasons in the Channel, before flying to Ghana and becoming the assistant of Claude Le Roy, his lifelong mentor.
In October 2013, Hervé Renard returned to France to take the reins of Sochaux.
Only one year in the Montbéliard club, which will not avoid relegation that season.
Follower of very short experiences, it is in Lille that "the man in the white shirt" makes an express passage.
In May 2015, the French coach signed a three-season contract.
He was dismissed in November after only seven Ligue 1 games.
Read also“Take your phone and take a picture with Messi!”
: the magic sequence on video of Renard in the Saudi dressing room
“
My next club?
It will be abroad.
It's the logic that wants that,
explained the coach to
Canal
+ a few weeks after his departure.
I am not certain, after having spent so many years abroad, that I am in the best possible conditions to practice my profession in France
.
However, the one who is sometimes called "the white wizard" in Africa has not forgotten his roots.
“
I will be behind the Blues, like a lambda supporter
, confided Hervé Renard to
Figaro
, as the last World Cup approaches.
It's my country, I'm French!
When they are world champions in 2018, a whole people is in the street… What can bring together millions of people like football?
That's the beauty of this sport.
»
Whether in Africa or Saudi Arabia, Hervé Renard has always kept a link with France.
In Riyadh, he watched the matches of Ligue 1, the Blues, did not miss a crumb of the Tour de France or the Six Nations Tournament.
“
I love France, I breathe it in and it will never leave me
,” he admitted to Le
Figaro
in a major interview before the World Cup.
Sign of his desire to succeed in the country, he will receive enormously less money while his salary was estimated at 4M€ per year in Saudi Arabia.
As coach of the French women's team, Corinne Deacon earned €400,000 a year.
Modest childhood and social media star
In an interview with
Liberation
in 2015, Hervé Renard, who grew up with his mother and stepfather, remembers the difficult end of the month.
“
She did extras to make ends meet.
It was sometimes complicated, but we were not the only ones.
Today, she is proud of me, but sometimes I am ashamed.
I can't tell him the salaries we get in football.
“A semi-professional player, it has not been a long calm river during his career either.
He sometimes worked as a maintenance worker.
Since then, Hervé Renard has forged a solid reputation as a coach but also… on social networks.
And sometimes in spite of himself.
Read alsoWorld Cup: Hervé Renard, a life of football and adventures, discover the French technician who created the first surprise of the World Cup
Very present on Instagram, the coach does not hesitate to share snapshots of his daily life, often highlighting it.
Some of his phrases have also remained more mythical than others.
As in the last World Cup, during half-time against Argentina.
"
Take your phone and take a picture with him
," he says to one of his players, whom he considered too lax on his marking on Lionel Messi.
At 54, the hardened coach has the opportunity to (finally) become a prophet in his country.
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