The captain of the French team, Wendie Renard, still has “this obsession with winning a title” with the Blues, she confided on Wednesday in an interview with AFP, a month after the failure of the elimination in the quarter-finals of the World Cup and before the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Looking back, what do you remember from the World Cup? Wendie Renard: Collectively we are obviously disappointed, we did not manage to achieve the objective. I think we showed some great things. We came very close to overturning this match against Australia. We must continue to work on what happened during the 52 days we spent together, where I think the group was united and conquering. We must keep this to improve for the Nations League and especially for next summer and the Olympics. Many were experiencing their first World Cup and experience cannot be bought. I hope that we will still store up some maturity, some vice. For example, the first action of the match against Australia, the defender pulls Kady’s (Diani) jersey. If she falls, there is a red card and we are eleven against ten, it is an action which requires vice.
Did the Australians manage to beat you? I think so. We started the match well, the first twenty minutes, we deserved to score. At the start of the second (period) we took the hurricane, but we managed to be strong and we finished very well, even during overtime, we were on top physically. We deserved to score. At times they managed to outsmart us, we played more long games than usual. We have room for improvement on this. I don’t think it was a mental problem.
Is elimination in the quarter a failure? No, we can go out in the quarter, in the half, we always retain the winner. It’s more about how we felt on the pitch. If we had been defeated against Australia and had qualified in the eighth or quarter, that could have been the case.
Will the 2024 Olympics be your last competition with Les Bleues? At 33 years old, if I have to compete in the World Cup again, I will have to wait four years: nothing is impossible, but at the end of the match against Australia, I say to myself: C This is your last World Cup. Today, I do everything to remain efficient and it is the field that will judge, the mental freshness too, I have been giving for years, years that I have been at the highest level, there can be weariness, At the moment this is not the case for me. I have this obsession with winning a title with my country, and we have a new competition starting, the Olympics at home, there are two competitions left with the Nations League. Today, I’m not saying anything, there’s the Euro also not far away in 2025. It all depends on performance, if I see that I’m bad, I’ll be the first to say goodbye.
You withdrew from the selection last year, what do you think of the situation in Spain? It’s a shame for them, because they won the World Cup. And we forget what they did on the ground. It bothers me that we put the extra-sporting aspect before talking about the field. Today with this title, they are even more legitimate to ask for change on things that do not suit them, it is well done on their part. They do it for themselves and the generations to come. Last year, I decided to step back because it didn’t suit me personally, I didn’t ask to fire anyone. I want the best for myself and for the players I play with, I need a high-performance environment to improve and win titles.
How do you feel seeing empty stadiums in D1, unlike Australia? It’s very hard. We are light years away from what we see in England and Spain. It was magnificent in Australia and no matter the matches, particularly those of Colombia and Brazil. We feel that something is happening, but there were very few French supporters. It’s hard because we can’t say we don’t have the potential. In terms of media and marketing, there are things to improve for everyone, the clubs, the federation. When you lose time, it’s difficult to make up for it in two months. We would almost have to set off a bomb (laughs) to catch up for the coming generations.