It was a little over ten years ago that Hervé Renard formulated a few sentences that, from today's perspective, seem like a glimpse of a great future.
On the eve of the day Renard becomes Zambia's national hero, the current coach of the Saudi national team takes a look back.
"I took out the garbage for eight years," he says, because at that moment it becomes clear that his life has taken an almost fairytale turn: from building cleaner to hero of an entire country.
"I will never forget that time when I had to get up at three every morning to go to work," says Renard, before he actually won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2012 with the blatant outsider - "Football is magical".
The Zambians' success at the time was about as likely as FC Augsburg's German league title, but Renard is a gambler.
A man who somehow strayed from the normal path of life to become the protagonist of a fairy tale.
The 54-year-old Frenchman is now the head coach of World Cup participants Saudi Arabia, who has the unexpected chance on Saturday after the second game against Poland (2 p.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the World Cup, on ARD and on MagentaTV ) to advance to the round of 16.
When Renard made large parts of the Arab world happy with his Saudis' 2-1 victory over Argentina last Tuesday, he spoke of "stars" who were on his team's side.
Unspectacular beginning
He feels very "light", he says, and the ruling family around Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in Riyadh is presenting the people with a national holiday.
Once again, Renard has cemented its reputation as a specialist in cinematic underdog victories.
The footballing life of the 54-year-old Frenchman, who likes to wear white shirts with the button placket wide open, actually got off to a rather unspectacular start.
He lacks talent as a player, but in the youth academy at AS Cannes it quickly becomes clear that others are more talented.
It's only enough for a modest-level career at AS Cannes, Stade Vallauris and SC Draguignan.
Renard has only played one game in France's top division, League 1.
At the end of his career he is neither a rich man nor did he have a really good plan for the future and initially cleaned offices as a building cleaner for several years.
Football is now just a hobby, in his spare time he coaches the underclass SD Draguignan until he meets the football globetrotter Claude Le Roy in 2004, whose assistant he becomes at Cambridge United in the fourth English division.
The wild journey begins
Thus begins the wild journey that takes him to China, Zambia, Angola, Morocco, the Ivory Coast and, in between, back to France, where all attempts to be successful at a high level fail.
But Renard works miracle after miracle outside of Europe, because his projects are almost always about more than football.
His victory at the Africa Cup of Nations with Zambia is not just a sensation, the coup also succeeds a few kilometers from the place where the greatest tragedy in Zambian football happened - a plane crash in 1993 that killed almost the entire national team life comes.
When Renard was successful with Ivory Coast in the 2015 continental tournament and thus became the only coach to date to win this competition with two different nations, the story of the golden generation of Ivorian footballers around Didier Drogba and the brothers Kolo and Yaya Touré was told to the end.
Drogba has just resigned from the team, ending the infighting to finally create a functioning unit that will lead Renard to triumph.
"Moment of Shared Ecstasy"
And now, as coach of Argentina's conquerors Saudi Arabia, he finds himself at the center of football's greatest stage and proclaims that the Saudi Crown Prince, who effectively rules the country, also played a part in the victory, because : "When we met the prince, he didn't put any pressure on us, that's wonderful." Renard is obviously aware of the political significance of the success.
Heads of state from the entire region, which is mired in many conflicts, congratulate, "the Arab world is experiencing a rare moment of shared ecstasy," writes the "Saudi Gazette" after the victory against Argentina and the news portal "Middle East Eye" announces: "From Morocco to on Iraq, fans forget supposed political divisions.” When assessing such events, caution is required because it is completely unclear how sustainable this sudden feeling of solidarity is, the conflicts of interest still exist.
The fact that Qatar's Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani puts a Saudi flag around his shoulders after the coup by the "Green Falcons" from the neighboring country can be seen as a grand gesture of reconciliation.
In 2017, a long-simmering conflict with neighboring countries had escalated, leading to a quartet of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman orchestrating a blockade campaign against Qatar.
Borders and airspace have been closed to isolate Qatar.
The crisis was resolved in 2021, and this World Cup is further promoting the conciliatory mood in the Gulf.
Right in the middle: the former building cleaner Hervé Renard from Aix-les-Bains.