She is the captain of Lyon and an insurmountable wall in the axis of the Lyonnais defense. Wendie Renard (Martinique, 1990) will play against Barcelona in his eleventh Champions League final. With her wild mane and 1.87m wingspan, her powerhouse has never gone unnoticed. Not even when she arrived in France at the age of 16, from the small Caribbean island of Martinique, to carve out a future as a soccer player. She has always been obsessed with the ball and she was lucky to be born into a family that encouraged her to follow her dream.
At the age of 8, she lost her father to cancer, so she grew up surrounded by strong women who taught her to be tough. Thanks to this strength she managed to go from being a recently emigrated teenager who cried in her room because they laughed at her Caribbean accent, to wearing the armband of the most powerful team in Europe. Only three years after arriving in Lyon she signed her first professional contract and at 23 she inherited the captaincy from the hands of an emblem of the club such as Sonia Bompastor, now coach of the French team.
Her tenacity has made her a legend of the best team of all time, with eight Champions League titles under her belt, and at 33 years old she has already made a place for herself in history by being the footballer who has played the most European competition matches (110) since his arrival at Lyon in 2006.
