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Paris. Since Wendy Rennard announced her boycott on Friday, the heavy pieces on the national team have fallen like dominoes. The goal is to dismiss national team captain Corinne Diacre.
The crisis shows once and for all that the French Football Federation must stop sweeping problems under the rug and take its stars seriously.
French national football is going through one of its worst crises ever with less than six months to go before this summer’s Women’s World Cup. This may seem impossible, given the long string of player strikes, abuse dramas, prostitution scandals and sextortion videos that only the past 15 years have delivered. But Captain Wendy Renard’s announcement on Friday of her departure from the national team “under the current circumstances”, followed by the same decision by Paris Saint-Germain attacking stars Cadediato Diagne and Marie-Antoinette Catoto, shook French football so much that L’Equipe is ahead. Columnist Vincent Duloc calls it a “coup”. What is it about then?
We have to take the squad back to 2017, when Corinne Diacre, 48, took over as captain of the national team. Diacre made history as the first woman to coach a men’s team in the French first division. Between 2014 and 2017, Clermont lifted Foot from relegation to fifth place in Ligue 2. With the experience of men’s football it was seen as something of a savior for French women’s football. The country has long dominated international club football with its virtually unbeatable Olympique Lyonnais, but the national team has never managed to capitalize on Olympic success. Despite their unusual talent bank, they never made it past the quarter-finals in any tournament.
Diacre began his journey by stripping Wendy Renard of the captaincy on the grounds that she “didn’t play as well with the national team as with Lyon”, according to a biography of the latter that came a few years later.
I’ve seen firsthand that Corinne Diacre falls short of prejudices about empathetic female leadership. In an interview with Aftonbladet and a couple of other media outlets ahead of WC 2019, she brushed off a fellow Frenchwoman by asking if he “didn’t see her pick.” She is very strict about her privacy and very little is known about her private life at all.
Wendy Rennard took back the captaincy two years ago – “everyone does stupid things sometimes, me too,” Diacre commented on it all – but the rift between the stars and the new captain of the national team can be seen early.
Since then, controversies have followed one another. After the home World Cup in 2019, when France was knocked out in the quarter-finals against the reigning United States, Megan Rapinoe questioned the home team’s tactics. A few days later, Diacre criticized Lyon star Eugenie Le Sommer’s ability to take tactical instructions in an interview with French television. After, among other things, the outrage of Lyon club president Jean-Michel Aulas against the federation captain’s statement, Diacre apologized.
And so it went on.
Both Le Sommers and team mate Amandine Henry missed out on the UEFA squad this summer. Henry, a mainstay of the French national team for many years, had previously told how the atmosphere in the group dropped to minus degrees during WC 2019 and that “many girls cried in their rooms” during the tournament which would mean the big breakout on home soil.
Goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi testified to a “very negative framing” about the national team and several men’s players at Clermont Foot compared Diacre’s leadership to dictatorship, with sudden sitting down without explanation being a characteristic.
Banned for inappropriate behavior
So how did Corinne Diacre manage to hold her ground?
The reason is Noel Le Graet, who until recently was the president of the French Football Federation and perhaps Diacre’s biggest supporter in his homeland. Lou Graet, 81, extended her contract after the 2019 World Cup, even though she missed the set goal of playing in the final. Two years later, he confirmed that Diacre was the right woman for the job, but admitted she “could be a better communicator.”
The same Le Graët was suspended from his union jobs for a few weeks after an investigation showed he had subjected female employees to inappropriate behaviour.
In other words, the French Football Federation has a serious problem. Most importantly for the stars of the national team, Corine Diacre has been missing her constant protector.
Major renovation work is needed
Over the weekend, three other players in the national team left the same message as the trio of Renard/Katoto/Diagne. On Tuesday, the Football Association will hold a board meeting, where two issues will dominate the agenda. Noel Le Graet is expected to hand in his resignation. With him gone, the FFF will have to go out and do a real renovation, where the well-being and troubles of the women’s national team will be the most important thing. For several years, incident after incident had clearly indicated that something was not right with one of the most talented national teams in the world.
What remains is the question of whether you would fire your national team captain five months before the World Cups in Australia and New Zealand? In any case, the alternative does not seem very sustainable at the moment.