🇫🇷 Euro 2022 Player to Watch: Wendie Renard | OneFootball

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Wendie Renard

Quite simply, the French captain is the one player her team cannot do without.

They can still function superbly even when stars like Amandine Henry, who was player of the match in last season’s Champions League final, or Eugénie Le Sommer and Viviane Asseyi are controversially left at home by coach Corinne Diacre.

But she may feel she can afford to do without those big names as long as she has Renard at the back holding everything together.

It can’t be entirely coincidental that Les Bleus have won their last 12 successive games and that the last time they were defeated (by the USA in April last year), it came in a rare fixture where the Lyon stopper was an absentee.

Renard is undoubtedly one of the world’s best players in her position, a towering aerial presence at the heart of defence who combines that dominance with her ball-playing abilities and reliability in starting attacks from the back.

It isn’t just her defensive class that makes her indispensable though, with her height and reactions in the opposing box also making her a big attacking threat too – as evidenced by her extremely impressive return of 33 international goals.

The 31-year-old, who has been capped 131 times for her country, need only point to her club medal haul as evidence of her status – helping guide Lyon to a staggering 15 domestic league titles and eight Champions League victories during her 16 years on the books.

In April, she also became the first woman to reach a century of appearances in UEFA club competition and soon marked the occasion by taking her scoring tally in those fixtures to 32 and is the only player to rank in the top 10 of that organisation’s Women’s Player of the Year award more than six times.

“I don’t think the media or public are really aware of the impact she can have on a game through her quality play, leadership and professionalism,” her former Lyon boss Gérard Prêcheur stated, as quoted by UEFA.

“I leaned on Wendie a lot. We didn’t always disagree because she is a huge personality but we always worked towards our common goal.”

That goal this summer will be finally fulfilling France’s expectations and recreating the success of club sides like Lyon and PSG on the international stage.

With Renard spearheading the charge, it is entirely possible.