SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Saudi Arabia may have lost their second game in the world cup. But what they did in the first and the way they played in the second has given this world lessons beyond football. Their coach has taught them what leadership is. And that leadership is not about selling dreams but converting them into reality.
He has taught the team that heroes are not Individuals. The hero is the process and the results built on the handiwork of all.
From governments to corporates, the Saudi Arabia template of passionate football and collective leadership is a template worth emulating.
At halftime of the match against Argentina, he was prancing around the room, a cross between an animated French professor and a charged-up general. The Coach of Saudi Arabia, Hervé Renard, did not speak the language of his wards. It was his interpreter who not only had to translate his words but give heart to and passion to them in the manner that the coach did.
But in the end, when the heart speaks, words don’t matter. As the players clapped, it didn’t seem like a reaction to the interpreter but to the sounds of the coach and his actions.
He did say: “Go, go go. Give it all you have. Years later, you will look back to this day. Look at yourselves and look at each other.”
At half-time when Saudi Arabia was a goal behind, the coach flaying his arms and gesticulating wildly said something about Messi to his players. “You want to take a photo with Messi?,” seemingly a sarcastic dig at his players for being in awe of him.
His talk before the game and at halftime turned it around. A miracle happened. Argentina was beaten and the rest is… not history but a living ensuring reality.
His players lovingly call Renard a perfectly mad coach. “We have a crazy coach,” the midfielder Abdulelah al-Malki said, adding, “He motivated us at half-time, telling us stuff that made us want to eat the grass” (Quoted by The Guardian).
But there is a lot of method to his madness. But beneath this lies belief. And this is a story that only those who follow international football beyond Europe and Latin America would know.
In 2012, Hervé Renard became the coach of Zambia, which had not too long ago lost 18 players in a plane crash near Capital Gabon. So, Renard was basically giving birth to a new team. And yes, he won the Africa nationals cup, the equivalent of the Euros, in Africa with this team beating Ivory Coast in the finals, in Gabon.
Three days before the finals, he took his players to the site of their plane crash where 18 of their former colleagues had died and inspired them to play for their deceased predecessors.
Three years later, he became the coach of Ivory Coast and won the Africa Nations again, becoming the first manager to do so with two countries.
He then took over as coach of Morocco and almost defeated mighty Spain in the 2018 World Cup till the Iberians drew 1-1 through a VAR-awarded goal.
When Saudi Arabia turned to him, they stopped the revolving door of coaches and hired him to take them on an inspiring journey. And he has made the players believe. He taught them to punch above their weight. He got them to understand that no team is better when the game starts. He helped them not to see stars in others but in themselves.
He has already moved mountains. If Saudi Arabia manages to pull off one more win in their last game, they are in the quarter-finals.
But why does he deserve this space and attention? Because when we see role models of leadership and governance, we need to emulate and take lessons.
Hervé Renard is not just a football coach. He is a Prime Minister, a Chief Minister, a Minister, a sarpanch, a CEO, or a President of a company. Quite simply, his qualities govern team building and nation building in a manner that only a football team coached by the likes of Renard can teach us.
Imagine a head of government at any level, telling his or her team to look at each other and play and perform to win. In governance, victory is only one, delivery of service. And when you fail, it is not for the lack of inspiration and trying. You get up to fight another day.
This World Cup will have a winner. And there will be many more inspiring stories of players and coaches. But the Green Falcons coached by the man in white, Hervé Renard, have etched their names, their game, and the leadership of their inspiring manager on the sands of Qatar and around the globe, as brand managers of the phrase “Nothing is impossible”.
Football indeed is a beautiful game, but with folks like Renard, the game becomes the leitmotif of life and leadership.
