Herve Renard Is Back in Abidjan, and Ivory Coast Is Betting on History Repeating Itself
Herve Renard walked back into the Ivorian Football Federation's press room on Thursday, August 6, and the room he walked into wasn't the same one he left in 2016. Back then, Ivory Coast were still trying to prove something. Now they're the team everyone else is chasing, African champions since 2024, a first World Cup knockout appearance behind them, and a federation that has just decided its next coach should be the man who broke the curse the first time.
The 57-year-old Frenchman succeeds Emerse Fae, whose contract with the federation was not renewed after it expired on July 31, following a World Cup campaign that took Ivory Coast to the round of 32 before a 2-1 exit to Norway. It was, by any measure, a strong tenure. Fae had already delivered the 2024 AFCON on home soil. That the federation still chose to move on says something about how high the bar has been set in Abidjan, and Renard knows it.
"It is a great honor for me to return to lead this Ivorian team. It is a source of immense pride, and I thank everyone who contributed to making this return possible," Renard said at his unveiling, Pan Africa Football reported.
The weight of coming back a winner
Renard isn't walking into this blind. He was the coach who, in 2015, ended Ivory Coast's 23-year wait for an AFCON title, beating Ghana on penalties in Equatorial Guinea. That result made him the first coach to win the tournament with two different nations, having already lifted it with Zambia in 2012. Eleven years is a long time between spells, but the currency he built in Abidjan clearly hasn't expired.
What's changed is the job description. Renard isn't arriving to build something. He's arriving to not let something slip.
"The expectations of Ivorian fans are immense. Ivory Coast is a nation built to win trophies. We must be demanding every day in order to achieve the best possible results," he said, according to Pan Africa Football.
That's not false modesty, and it isn't meant to be. Renard's coaching résumé since Ivory Coast has included spells with Morocco, Saudi Arabia, France's women's national team, and, most recently, an emergency mid-tournament rescue mission with Tunisia at the 2026 World Cup that didn't work out. He said the decision to return to African football had been forming for months before Ivory Coast came calling.
He now takes charge with the 2027 AFCON qualifiers, co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, on the horizon. For a federation that has stopped treating trophies as the ceiling, hiring the man who first raised it feels less like nostalgia and more like a plan.
