Wendie Renards rise to captaining France against Germany at Euro 2022

“There’s no football without mass in my house!” said Marie-Helena Renard to her nine-year-old daughter, Wendie.

That was the rule, and so the young girl sat dutifully behind her mother in her church outfit, listening to the pastor’s sermon in the village of Precheur on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Towards the end of the mass, she turned to her mother and said: “Peace be with you.”

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As Marie-Helena walked up the street to return home, she was alone. Her daughter had already raced off as soon as mass finished. As she passed the football pitch, within earshot of their house, she heard the name Wendie being shouted. She went over, intrigued to see who else in their village shared a name with her daughter.

There she was young Wendie herself, by now in full kit, playing a match.

“It’s impossible,” she thought. “I saw her at mass.”

Marie-Helena shouted over but her daughter put a finger to her lips.

It turned out Renard had passed the pitch on the way to church and told the coach, “Put my name down — I’ll make the second half.”

“I always said that Wendie was an athlete, even in my belly, because she was kicking all the time,” Marie-Helene tells The Athletic, sitting on a sofa in an Airbnb rental in the Yorkshire city of Doncaster, having flown over from the Caribbean to watch her daughter captain France at the ongoing Women’s European Championship.

It is the first time she has seen her play in the flesh since the 2019 World Cup.

France were the hosts that year and among the favourites but lost 2-1 in the quarter-final to defending champions and eventual winners the United States. Renard was so angry with herself afterwards that she didn’t want to see her family but eventually made herself say hello to her cousins.

Over 16 years, the 6ft 2in (187cm) Renard has conquered Europe with French club Lyon: eight Champions League final wins, nine French Cups, 14 league titles, and six appearances in the FIFPro World XI since 2015. Her ability to maintain such a high level of performance for so long makes her one of the best players in the women’s game worldwide.

And yet a trophy with her national team eludes her.

After a quarter-final loss to England in Euro 2017, then-new coach Corinne Diacre stripped Renard of the captaincy. Renard writes in her book, “Mon Etoile” (My Star), that Diacre said she was at “40 per cent of her capacity with the French team” and “perhaps the armband took up too much of her energy”.

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Diacre is still France’s coach, and her relationship with the squad has not always been easy. Eyebrows were raised again when Lyon stars Amandine Henry and Eugenie Le Sommer were left out of the squad for these Euros.

However, Diacre gave the armband back to Renard last September and tonight (Wednesday) the 32-year-old will lead her country against Germany in their first major tournament semi-final for 10 years.

Renard comes from a very sporty family.

Her mother, uncles and aunts played football and handball and were keen swimmers. One aunt is still a referee today.

When she was around five years old, Renard started kicking a ball with her friends in the car park next to her mother’s house.

Older boys who played for local team Essor-Prechotain organised what were called “sweats”. She would watch them, collect the balls and, with boys her age, patiently wait her turn to join in. If they didn’t have a goalkeeper, she’d be called up. By the age of 10, she was playing with them all the time — first on the pitch as soon as school finished, running about bare-chested.

As they say in Martinique, Renard was a “chien boule” (ball dog) — she always had to have a ball at her feet. When there wasn’t one around, she would make do kicking plastic bottles, oranges or lemons. At school, they didn’t have a football for the playground, so she made one out of newspaper with cornstarch to harden it.

One day, her teacher asked the class what they wanted to do for a living. Renard wrote down two jobs: professional football player and flight attendant.

“Wendie, forget it,” the teacher replied. “That job doesn’t exist for girls.”

But over 15 years later, when that same teacher saw Renard playing for French on TV, she called the Lyon defender’s mother and started to cry tears of joy.

“To think that I said no to this child,” the teacher said to Marie-Helena. “It’s always what she wanted to do, she has realised her dream.”

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When mother and daughter watched Marie-Jose Perec from the neighbouring island nation of Guadeloupe win gold for France in the 200m and 400m at the 1996 Olympic Games, Marie-Helena started to cry. Wendie, then six years old, told her mum: “One day, you will see me on TV and you are going to cry.”

She was right.

When Renard was seven, she joined Essor-Prechotain’s juniors. They were her first club, and played just down the hill from her house at the Albert Joyau pitch, training on Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes with tournaments on Saturdays.

Even though there weren’t regular junior matches at the weekends, Renard would be there at the stadium. Writing in her autobiography, she recalls making ham and cheese sandwiches for their men’s team, with a fruit juice on the side.

At 14, Renard, who grew up idolising France great Zinedine Zidane and Paris Saint-Germain duo Ronaldinho and Pauleta, played on Saturday afternoons for Rapid Club du Lorrain girls and the next day with and against boys for Essor-Prechotain. Holding the line at the back and sprinting forward to score up front, she carried those teams.

Such was her determination to play, she would hitchhike from Precheur to Lorrain, a 90-minute journey from the west coast of the island to the east.

That wasn’t a rare occurrence either.

On the day she was selected to play for the French West Indies national team, Marie-Helena refused to be her taxi driver. Her daughter simply replied: “I’ll manage.”

Although all the seats of a people carrier were taken up by the other girls attending, Renard took a stool and sat on that in the boot of the car.

Renard, who is the youngest of four sisters, is close to her mum, and their relationship became even closer when her father Georges died from prostate and lung cancer when she was eight.

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“She was always stuck to him, he was everything to her,” says Marie-Helena. A tall calm man, Renard recalls in her book how she and her dad would talk to each other all the time and tease one another. She would stroke his hair and fall asleep on his shoulder.

Marie-Helena went back and forth every day to the Albert-Clarac hospital in the capital Fort-de-France, an hour south of Precheur, before Georges was transferred to a hospital closer to home. Despite chemotherapy, his condition did not improve.

When her father passed away, it didn’t come as a surprise to Renard. She was expecting it. Before he died, Georges spoke to her alone from his hospital bed.

“The conversation that we had will remain etched in my mind for the rest of my life,” Renard recalls in her book.

“We had an adult conversation. A conversation that I am not supposed to have at eight years old. I replied simply, ‘OK, Dad’. It was then he said he was going to pass away.”

“I don’t know what he said to her,” says Marie-Helena, tears filling her eyes. “The only thing I know is that her dad told her I shouldn’t be let down because I had already suffered. She said to me, ‘Dad told me to take care of you’. That’s the only thing she said but she didn’t tell me everything.

“She didn’t react when he died. She didn’t say anything because she was already prepared. During the funeral at the church, an elderly neighbour came to me and said, ‘Marie-Helena, take care of that child. She hasn’t shed a single tear’.

“She kept her word. She talks to me every day, or every other day. I’ve gotten so used to it that if I haven’t heard from her on Tuesday or Wednesday I tell her, ‘You haven’t called me for at least a month!’. She says ‘Mum, that’s not true!’. Even if she calls me and says, ‘I’m going to training, I’ll call you later’, and doesn’t call me back, I know I’ve heard her voice that day.

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“When we sing the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, when we sing ‘Aux armes, citoyens’ (To arms, citizens), you see that she looks up to the sky. That’s her dad. When he sang the Marseillaise, he used to cry.”

In 2005, Jocelyn Germe, known as “Jojo”, the regional football technical advisor of Martinique, decided for the first time to allow girls to enrol at the regional training centre in Francois, a town in the south east of the island. Out of 50 or 60 candidates, they offered 30 places, but only two to girls.

From Monday to Friday, at the age of 15, Renard practically lived there, completing her studies and playing football.

Mother and daughter would leave home at 3am on a Monday and travel 90 minutes across the island. Marie-Helena would then head back home to work at the nursery where she is still an assistant today. Renard would be dropped at the centre at 4.30am, try to sleep standing up, and wait until the gates opened at 7am.

“What struck me was that she wasn’t afraid of contact,” Germe says in Renard’s book.

“Sometimes, she was beaten in running or tackles because the boys were more athletic, but I never saw her give up. Sometimes the boys skipped training, but Wendie was always there.”

Following her husband’s death, it was just Marie-Helena and two of her daughters at home.

“Wendie was the one closest to me. She had promised me she wouldn’t leave and would stay with me,” she says. However, an opportunity arose that Renard couldn’t turn down.

In April 2006, Germe organised a trial for Renard at Clairefontaine, the elite academy in Paris run by the French Football Federation (FFF).

Marie-Helena was hesitant to let the 16-year-old go on a flight alone across the Atlantic.

“I said to her, ‘Even if I find the money, no Wendie, don’t go. You’re a girl, I don’t know where you’re going, I’m not going to let you go’. She looked at me, started crying and said, ‘Mum, this is for my own good’.

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“I said, ‘I am asking you one question, and you going will depend on your answer. If you suffer in France, what are you going to say?’. She replied, ‘It’s me who went looking for it. If I suffer, it’s my fault’.”

Renard prepared her suitcase using a list of what to bring: two pairs of boots — one with moulded studs, one with screw-ins — plus her kit and some casual clothes. Before leaving, her mum had bought her one thin jumper. Renard didn’t know what to expect 4,000 miles away in France, but was excited. Her mother was heartbroken.

“I cried a lot,” Marie-Helena says. “I thought, ‘It’s not possible, Wendie has left me’.”

On a Friday evening, Renard took the eight-hour flight alone. Landing in Paris the next morning, she was welcomed by her uncle Roger, who will be in the crowd tonight as France take on Germany in Milton Keynes.

Roger dropped her off at Clairefontaine on a Monday morning for her five-day trial, along with 27 other girls. Only 12 would be chosen. Her hands were frozen. She phoned her uncle to bring her some gloves and long-sleeved shirts.

Some of the other girls knew one another, having played together or against each other already in France. Nobody knew Renard or which team she played for in Martinique.

Returning to her uncle’s house at the weekend, Renard kept checking online to see whether she had made the final 12. She didn’t get in.

Although bitterly disappointed, Renard has fond memories of the experience. There are questions as to why the FFF didn’t take her, but the failure at Clairefontaine did not prevent success elsewhere.

On the following Monday morning, Germe contacted a friend in Lyon, Fred Labiche, who approached Farid Benstiti, head coach of the southern city’s women’s team Lyon Feminin, to organise a trial. Renard was invited down from Paris the next day.

“I didn’t sleep that night,” says Marie-Helena.

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“I sent my daughter to a man I had never met before. I told him to look out for a tall girl with baggy clothes but with a big smile.”

Renard travelled to Lyon alone on a train, without a phone. She had agreed to meet Labiche next to a certain sports shop but when she arrived he wasn’t there. She waited calmly, leaning against a post. He arrived 20 minutes late.

“I thought we’d do a trial for several days but when Wendie started training, after day one or two, I decided to sign her almost immediately,” Benstiti, who was head coach at Lyon from 2001 to 2010, tells The Athletic.

At first, Renard struggled to fit in. Her accent was different. “When I talk, they laugh,” her mum recalls the 16-year-old saying. Renard would play a song in the Creole language spoken back in the Caribbean including the lyrics “I miss you” as she looked at a photo of her mother.

What put her at ease was being taken in by Labiche, who became her advisor, and getting to know Joan Hartock, the Lyon men’s goalkeeper at the time, who was also from Martinique.

He introduced her to other footballers from Martinique and Reunion, another island nation with historic links to France that has produced players including Dimitri Payet and Laurent Robert. Renard had found a family away from her blood family.

“The first thing that struck me was her determination. Then it was her technical quality,” Benstiti says.

“She could see passes through the line, whether it’s her short-ball game with the midfield, or her long balls higher up the pitch. She was strong and very good technically, had a good right foot and the left foot wasn’t bad.

“Her height, 183cm at the age of 16, was a bit of a problem, because (it affected) her movement, balance, coordination and agility. Also given her height, her heading was lacking. I told her that with her stature, if she worked on her heading, it would be vital for the team and make her an outstanding player.”

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Renard was willing to put in the hard yards, a work ethic instilled in her from a young age when she earned money by catching and selling fish at 4am.

When Sweden international Lotta Schelin, who played at Lyon from 2008-16 and is six years older than Renard, first saw their new defender, she thought, “This girl has it all.”

“I saw the potential, she was mature for her age, a youngster with a lot of integrity,” Schelin says. “She wasn’t as good at heading. It didn’t take long but suddenly she was so good in attack and defence, scoring everything in the box. You could see she was someone special.

“You can have all these skills but you have to be 100 per cent mentally prepared. She is so professional and focused. Throughout training, she is not joking around, she uses every minute.

“She goes into this professional mode. Not everyone did their gym sessions. Sometimes if the coach wasn’t looking, some girls wouldn’t give it their all. But she’s not like that. She wants to be the best.”

Renard joined Lyon at the right time.

Two years earlier, local women’s team FC Lyon had officially become a part of the Olympique Lyonnais organisation. Before everyone else, their president Jean-Michel Aulas laid down his marker to invest in women’s football. Over the last 18 years, he has built a dynasty at the club.

“Wendie was lucky and I was lucky,” Benstiti says.

“Aulas knew that Wendie was not only a good player but a very good woman, an unbelievable woman. The club decided to help Wendie with her school, training, medical… everything around Wendie was perfect.”

The teenager didn’t join the first team straight away but after a couple of months, she gradually became integrated into the squad.

In her first season, she played in the UEFA Women’s Cup, since rebranded as the Champions League, and although her favoured position was centre-back, Benstiti played her out of position so she could get more minutes under her belt.

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“I felt that it was buying time for her future,” he says.

Renard had planned to move to the University of Moncton in Canada with the hope of being signed by an American club.

Aulas, however, convinced her to stay in Lyon, and she signed her first professional contract in 2009.

Being one of the youngest members of the Lyon squad did not intimidate Renard.

“In training, she didn’t fear anyone. You had to put your shinpads on, and when there was contact you had to be very careful because Wendie didn’t hold back,” Benstiti says.

On one occasion, it was one of her team-mates who suffered because of her tackling. Just before a Champions League semi-final against the Swedish team Umea in April 2010, there was an in-house training game.

“The grass was so dry,” Schelin says.

“I tried to pass her, she tackled me and got the ball — it was totally fine but suddenly something in my foot popped.”

Schelin was ruled out of the semi-final.

“It wasn’t Wendie’s fault at all,” she says. “It was just bad luck. We’ve always pushed each other in that way.”

Schelin adds that although they pushed each other, Renard always pushed herself the most: “She was the one who had the most pressure on herself. She always strived for perfection and still does.”

In the first leg of a semi-final in the same competition two years earlier, also against Umea, Renard made a mistake up against Marta. The Brazilian legend capitalised, feeding Madelaine Edlund, who fired the visitors into the lead just before the hour.

Five minutes later, Benstiti took off the then-17-year-old.

“She was furious, not because she was substituted but because she had made a mistake,” he says. “She broke almost everything in the changing room. There were chairs flying.

“She must have remembered that moment. After that, she hardly made any more mistakes. Even though I had taken a real risk to play her in the semi-final, I continued to play and trust her. That was a turning point in her career.

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“In my last year (at Lyon), she gained muscle, had finished growing, worked on her technique, her tactics, and she became a complete player. In the year of the 2009-10 Champions League final, she really became the ideal future captain.”

Renard is not shy but reserved, preferring to observe before speaking.

She never hesitates to voice her opinion but only does so when it is necessary. Often, the look she gives says it all.

“You can see it in her eyes,” says Marie-Helena. “She says what she thinks, just like her mum. But always with respect.”

The fact that Renard is not the most vocal player did not prevent her from becoming Lyon captain in 2013.

“It’s not the things that she says,” Schelin explains. “It’s the things that she does — leading by example. You can always count on her.”

“As coaches, we don’t see everything,” Benstiti says. “She allows us to calm things down, motivate people, inform us to go and talk to a player. Not often, but when she says things it’s to tell the group the truth. The team knows it can count on her so she doesn’t need to prove it, it’s natural.”

Over her 16 years to date with Lyon, Renard has constantly strived for more, for herself, for her team and for the women’s game. Despite being wanted by Chelsea in 2017 and discussions being held in December last year, she has stayed loyal to the French club.

“She talks with Jean-Michel Aulas and tells him if something is wrong,” Schelin says. “She helps everyone in that way and demands a lot, it’s normal.

“When I’m talking about her, I feel like I can talk about (team-mate and Norway striker) Ada Hegerberg as well. Lyon have two of the world’s best. When they’re giving 100 per cent all the time, they’re also demanding that the people around them do the same.”

Renard has been captain for five consecutive Champions League final victories (and six overall), became the first player to make 100 appearances in that competition, holds the Lyon record for most games played, and is seventh on the all-time goalscoring list for the women’s game in France, but as well as no trophies at international level, she’s also never won the Ballon d’Or.

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“She deserves a Ballon d’Or because she’s been at that level for so long,” Schelin says.

A title with France by beating hosts England at Wembley on Sunday could secure the individual recognition Renard is surely due.

But not only have the French women never reached a major tournament final, their most recent semi-final before tonight was at the 2012 London Olympics. They beat Sweden 2-1 in the quarter-finals, with Schelin on the losing side.

“I was just standing on the pitch, very sad about the game,” she says of that match at Hampden Park in Glasgow. “Wendie came up and hugged me from behind, like a nice team-mate from Lyon.

“But when she hugged me — it’s so crazy — a bee stung me on my arm. I just want to tell her that I wasn’t angry at her, it was the bee!”

France’s 1-0 win over the Netherlands on Saturday, however, ended their 11-year quarter-final hoodoo, setting up this meeting with Germany.

“It’s crazy that France’s previous generation and the one they have now — with Wendie in both — have never won anything,” Schelin says.

“The French team must take this European Championship as a real pleasure to play,” adds Benstiti. “Each time we started as favourites, the team became fragile in the big moments.

“Corinne Diacre understands that she must trust players like Wendie to bring serenity to the group. The understanding between the younger players, especially those of PSG, and Wendie is good. This is different from the team when there were some tensions between (players from) Lyon and PSG.

“You have to let Wendie manage herself. She doesn’t need anything else, she needs to talk about football and goals.”

“What I wish for the French team, not only for Wendie, because it’s a team — is that they lift the trophy,” her mum Marie-Helena says. “At 32 years old, the French team must win together with her.

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“I don’t say if. The French team will win.

“To all the girls of the French team: help each other, play together; it’s together that we will win, not individually, it’s together.”

(Main graphic — photos: Getty Images/design: Sam Richardson)

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