Most men you encounter are either skeptical or ashamed of believing in astrology. If you’re a woman, well, you might know by heart your chart and that of your loved ones. So when Raymond Domenech, who managed the France national soccer team from 2004 to 2010, mentioned that he used astrology to understand his players, the entire world lost its mind. People invented rumors and questioned his sanity. They forgot, for a moment, that he’d nearly won the World Cup. According to The Guardian, Domenech would spend years trying to explain himself and defend his approach to understanding how different people think and work.

The truth about what Domenech actually did with astrology is far more practical than anyone gave him credit for. And his story says a lot about the kind of things we’re willing to dismiss based purely on who’s believing them.

The Manager Who Believed in the Stars

Raymond Domenech was not a flaky person. He was a former center-back who played professionally for clubs including Lyon, Strasbourg, and Paris Saint-Germain. He’d been a disciplinarian as a coach, managing France’s under-21 team for eleven years before being appointed France manager in 2004. He was meticulous and analytical. You’d expect him to rely on spreadsheets and tactical formations, not zodiac signs.

But Domenech was also deeply curious about how humans work. He studied transactional analysis, communication techniques, graphology—anything that might help him understand the people he was coaching. And somewhere in that search, he discovered astrology.

“I’m a very inquisitive person,” Domenech explained to The Guardian. “I’ve always been interested in anything that can help understand how humans work. I studied all the communication techniques, transactional analysis, and so on. I also studied astrology and graphology.”

He read a book called Astrologie et Education that changed how he thought about coaching. The book argued that you can’t educate a Capricorn child the same way you’d educate a Gemini child. A Capricorn is organized, straightforward, introverted, and determined. A Gemini goes in all directions. You can’t strap a Gemini to a chair and demand they focus. They need freedom to roam while they think.

That struck him as true. And if you’re trying to manage twenty-three different men with twenty-three different personalities, it helps to have a framework for understanding them. Astrology gave him precisely that.

The Rumor That Wouldn’t Die

Then came Robert Pires. In 2006, Domenech left the 30-year-old Arsenal winger out of France’s World Cup squad. Immediately, rumors began circulating. Pires was a Scorpio, and Domenech had a beef with Scorpios. That’s allegedly why Pires was gone.

The rumor, however, was false. Domenech’s reasoning was straightforward: Pires’s performances were declining, and his attitude was divisive. But once the astrology angle caught fire, it became the headline.

“People started thinking I wear a wizard’s hat on my head and gaze into crystal balls,” Domenech said in The Guardian interview, nearly a decade later.

The frustration was warranted. Domenech explicitly denied using astrology for team selection. Ever. He said it was purely for understanding personalities and for coaching different types of people. But once the narrative took hold, almost nothing could change people’s minds.

The World Cup That Almost Was

Then, in 2006, Domenech nearly won the World Cup.

France was struggling in the qualifiers, and the team needed something. So Domenech did something bold: he convinced Claude Makélélé, Lilian Thuram, and Zinedine Zidane—all retired from international football—to come back. They said yes. And suddenly, France had what The Guardian called a “golden generation” on the pitch. They qualified, got to the tournament, and they made it all the way to the final.

Italy beat them on penalties, but the match itself was remarkable. According to The Guardian, Domenech’s tactical approach—pressing Brazil early in the quarterfinals to force them to defend—was perfect. “That was the perfect match,” he said years later. “Everything unfolded exactly how we wanted.”

Four Years Later, Everything Fell Apart

At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, France imploded. Players went on strike, Nicolas Anelka got sent off the team after a confrontation with Domenech, and the entire squad refused to train. France finished last in their group without winning a single game. In the end, Domenech was dismissed for serious misconduct.

The astrology rumors got worse. If he was so smart about reading people, how did he let it get this bad? But what the criticism missed was that some of his players were genuinely difficult. According to French Football News, Domenech later described Thierry Henry in his personal diary as “a banal self-absorbed Leo.” He called midfielder Yoann Gourcuff “a mildly autistic moron.” The supposedly astrology-obsessed manager was, in fact, a coach at the end of his rope, dealing with players who weren’t pulling their weight.

The Redemption

Domenech wrote a book called Tout Seul (All Alone). According to The Guardian, it became a bestseller in France. In it, he explained himself. He owned his mistakes and shed light on the context—the spoiled players, the federation’s lack of support, the hostile media. While public opinion shifted, the legend remained.

By 2016, when The Guardian interviewed him, Domenech had moved on. He wasn’t bitter. He was clear-eyed about what happened and what didn’t. What’s more, he defended his interest in astrology without apology. “Astrology has a value in finding out about people’s character,” he said. “Not in predicting the future or anything like that, but in working out people’s profiles.”

In the end, Domenech believed in astrology as a tool for understanding people. He also believed in tactical precision and in bringing retired legends back to win a World Cup. He did all of these things at once, and it almost worked. If Zidane hadn’t headbutted Marco Materazzi, if one penalty had gone a different way, the story would be completely different.

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