Hervé Renard is looking for extra soul…

“We have to improve on the psychological approach to competition,” explains Hervé Renard (here, June 6, in Paris).F. FIFE/AFP Baptiste Autissier / PANORAMIC

So far, so good. Officially appointed coach of the French women’s team at the end of March, in place of Corinne Deacon, out of the ban with a majority of her workforce and weighed down by a too conflicting sense of relationship, Herve Renard is still in this state of grace linked to the hope aroused by his arrival and reinforced by two first victories acquired in April against Colombia (5-2) and Canada (2-1). Two simple friendly encounters, of course, but which had the merit of allowing him to take the pulse of his troops, which has often been pounding in recent years. And not for good reasons, alas.

Between conflicts between players, old bets on a siding, a very (too) dictatorial mode of operation and failures competition after competition – culminating in the elimination in the quarter-finals of the last World Cup organized in the ‘Hexagon –, the Blue ones went from Charybdis to Scylla. Hence Hervé’s desire…