Wendie Renard To Become First Woman To Make 100 Champions League Appearances

This Sunday, Olympique Lyonnais captain and seven-time European champion, Wendie Renard will once more make history as the first woman to make 100 appearances in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.

Renard made her Champions League (then called the UEFA Women’s Cup) debut aged 17 in August 2007 against Slovakian side FK Slovan Duslo Šaľa, scoring in a 12-0 victory. With the introduction of a new group stage in the competition this season guaranteeing qualifying sides a minimum of six matches, Renard, at the age of 31, can expect to stretch her record over the coming seasons.

In the men’s game, where a group stage was introduced into the Champions League 30 years ago, a total of 45 players have appeared in 100 or more matches in the competition, led by the tournament’s all-time leading goalscorer, Cristiano Ronaldo on 183. The first man to achieve the feat was Real Madrid’s Raúl in February 2006.

With 83 appearances in the competition to date, Wolfsburg’s Alex Popp is next woman on the all-time list behind Renard but will not match her century for at least two years. However, Renard’s Champions League career is not just notable for it’s unprecedented longevity but for it’s unsurpassed success.

During her fifteen seasons in the competition, she has played in a staggering nine finals, winning the competition seven times, a feat only matched by her Olympique Lyonnais team-mates, goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi and Eugénie Le Sommer. Both are outright records in the sport, a benchmark previously held by men’s legend Francisco Gento who played in eight European Cup finals for Real Madrid in the 1950s and 1960s, winning six,

With 31 Champions League goals in her 99 appearances so far, the central defender is remarkably also among the top twenty goalscorers in the competition. Sunday’s opponents Paris Saint-Germain know only too well about her goalscoring abilities as it was Renard’s late header which settled the previous Champions League semi-final between the two sides in August 2020.

While other players generate more headlines, the consistency of Renard is venerated by her peers. She is the only player to be voted by her fellow professionals onto all six FIFPro Women’s World XI of the Year teams since its creation in 2015. No other player has been selected for the team on more than four occasions.

The youngest of four daughters born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Renard lost her father at the age of eight to lung cancer. When she revealed to her school teacher which career she wanted to pursue when she grew up, Renard was told that she could never be a professional soccer player because, for a woman, “that job doesn’t exist”.

After flying to France at the age of 15 for a trial at the Clarefontaine academy near Paris, Renard failed to earn herself a place on the coveted national training program. She instead travelled to Lyon for another trial and was subsequently signed by their head coach Farid Benstiti moving to live in the city aged just 16.

Speaking on Icons, a show streaming on FIFA+, Bensiti said, “Wendie Renard has truly been the most consistent player and defender of the last 15 years. Her desire to succeed is what made her what she is today. For me, that is the best defender, and maybe the best player in the world. It’s only whe she retires that people will realize that it will be very, very difficult to replace her.”

Director Stephanie Gillard got to know Renard during filming of her feature-length documentary on Olympique Lyonnais, Les Joueusus – Pas Là Pour Danser and witnessed first-hand the influence Renard has over the club. “I think Wendie is far more important to the success of Olympique Lyonnais than most people realize. As a captain she is always leading her team and giving it their competitive state of mind and hunger for victory. She is always focused on one target – to win. Even when she is on vacation, her entire schedule is dedicated to sport preparation”.

“She is quite reserved when she does not know the person in front of her, she takes time to get to know people. However, she spends a lot of time with the youth teams, transmitting the values and the history of the club and, more generally, of women’s football, and giving tips to them on how to be a better player”.

The first woman to win the Ballon D’Or, Ada Hegerberg has played alongside Renard at Lyon since 2014 and is in no doubt of Renard’s status in the game. “Having her background, coming from Martinique, I think there’s a lot of young girls that can look up to her and recognize themselves in her”, Hegerberg told me. “She’s a leader and I think she deserves all the recognition she can get for what she’s done in the world of football in the Champions League but also the image she’s portrayed.”