Coach Park will compete with the coach who once led Nam Dinh Club in the 3rd qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup.

Missed the chance with V-League

“I was one of the best. But when I faced the top players, I realized I wasn’t that good. In the end, I was just an average player in the third division,” coach Renard summed up his career in an interview with Reuters. As a player, he was just an average defender, despite playing with Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly as a teenager.

Coach Herve Renard was born in 1968, and was a professional footballer playing as a defender. After retiring in 1998, he started his career in the cleaning service industry, shortly before returning to football as head coach of Draguignan Club from 1999 to 2001.

Coach Herve Renard and player Luong Phuc of Nam Dinh team remember when he was still workingworking at the Nam Dinh football team in 2004. Photo courtesy

Leaving Europe, Herve Renard spent the next two years as assistant to coach Claude Le Roy at Shanghai Cosco (China) and Cambridge United (England), before being introduced to Song Da Nam Dinh Club (former name of Nam Dinh Club) in 2004.

Renard did not stay long because he could not adapt to the unfamiliar environment in V.League. He forcefully removed captain Van Sy and vice-captain Trung Kien from the Nam Dinh club's squad. Disagreements with the board of directors and players forced the French strategist to leave the team from the South after a few months.

The failure in V.League opened a new turning point for Herve Renard when he left Asia to try his hand at African football. His relationship with the black continent helped him make great strides in his career.

Renard Harve won CAN 2012 with the Zambian team. Photo archive

Renard's turning point came in 2011 when he returned to coach Zambia and helped the team win the 2012 African Cup of Nations. Three years later, he helped Ivory Coast win the tournament, making history as the first coach to win the African Cup with two different teams.

In between his brilliant stints with the aforementioned African teams, the coach born in 1968 also returned to his homeland to lead French clubs including Sochaux (2013-2014) and Lille (2015), but without much success.

It can be said that coach Herve Renard's coaching career is associated with less developed football backgrounds, before he brought the national teams of these football backgrounds to achievements that touched the ceiling in their countries.

Renard Harve won the 2015 AFCON with Ivory Coast. File photo

Leaving Lille in France, coach Herve Renard returned to Africa in 2016, then led the Morocco team from 2016 - 2019, before helping the North African team reach the 2018 World Cup finals as mentioned above.

In July 2019, after Morocco were eliminated from the Africa Cup of Nations, Herve Renard announced that he took responsibility for the defeat and resigned. Then, just a few weeks later, the French coach landed in Saudi Arabia.

Coach Herve Renard helped the West Asian team pass the second qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup in Asia. However, this achievement is not surprising, because Saudi Arabia has long been a leading force in continental football.

Coach Herve Renard will compete with coach Park Hang-seo in the upcoming match. Photo: File

Now, coach Herve Renard's next task is to help Saudi Arabia pass the third qualifying round to find a ticket to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the first challenge is the Vietnam national team.

Mr. Renard himself has not said anything about this reunion, has not mentioned the Vietnamese team, but the Saudi Arabian press has spoken first.

Immediately after the draw results, Arab News quickly commented on the match between Saudi Arabia and the Vietnamese team on the opening day of the third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup in Asia: "The Vietnamese team is progressing very quickly and they are harder to beat than before."

Vietnam National Teamwill open the third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup with an away match against Saudi Arabia on September 2.