Monday. A brief, brusque, and unexpected communique from Claude Michy, President of Clermont Foot :
Helena Costa has decided not to honour her commitments to Clermont Foot. Helena Costa will therefore not take up the position of manager for the coming season. This decision is sudden and surprising.
Tuesday morning. A press conference in which Costa said not very much, that she had discussed her reasons with Michy, and would not discuss them publicly. She leaves. Then, a press conference with Michy, who is slightly more garrulous :
There is no rational explanation. Football is full of surprises. Maybe the job scared her, I don’t know. But we have to accept this astonishing decision…it’s not the first time a man has been dumped by a woman.
Tuesday afternoon. As a result of Michy’s statements, Costa re-assesses her decision not to speak publicly about her reasons for stepping down, in a brutally detailed statement (in Portuguese).
The ‘highlights’: Not sudden. Not surprising. Total lack of respect. Rank amateurism. Finding out about player signings from the club secretary. No confirmation of when pre-season training would begin. No confirmation of the pre-season match schedule. Meetings being cancelled due to lack of information. Never meeting the players. And a Director of Football, Olivier Chavanon, who was on holiday, and not responding substantively to messages. Instead…
por exemplo: “Tu me fatigues avec tes mails, (…) “je ne suis pas ton executant”, (…) je ne suis pas a ta disposition.”
Those example messages are in French in the original and presumably therefore direct quotes. Tu. Tes. Ton. Ta. Quite apart from the rest of it. I’m getting tired of your emails. I’m not your underling. I’m not here at your disposal.
So, it’s looking like Michy’s decision to appoint a woman to manage Clermont Foot, which he swore blind at the time was a serious appointment, was…not serious. I wrote in that article that there was a “slight sneaking suspicion that Claude Michy could be looking to draw attention to his team”, and maybe the jokes he made at the time should have caused greater suspicion – but in the macho world of football, a jovial tone might be par for the course. Maybe also the reference to having only seventeen senior players, which was noted as context for why Clermont might need attention drawn to them, was also more important, given that player recruitment seems to have been a major part of the problem.
My fear, when writing about the original appointment, was that if – when – Clermont hit a sticky patch, this would be agreed to be down to Costa being a woman rather than the team being lower-mid-table amblers and the players no great shakes. Now, it is that the first appointment of a woman to manage a men’s team in France will make it even harder for there to be another one. Before, a woman might have doubted the motives of a club because this had never happened before; now, because it has happened before, and look how that went.
Michy has shot himself in the foot here, several times. If he was hoping that he could draw attention and create buzz around his club by an artificial appointment, putting Costa front and centre while not actually letting her do the job, then as well as misleading Costa, he’s also stiffed the players and the fans. A small group of them, “disappointed but respectful” per L’Equipe, saw Costa off after her press conference. If only the club hierarchy had tried the second of those adjectives.
By attempting to pass the blame onto Costa – whose statement repeatedly makes the point that no manager would have accepted how things were handled – he has brought it back onto himself. Her reaction, first in relation to the situation at the club, then to the handling of her resignation, looks professional, and reasonable - even showing loyalty to a club that had shown her so little respect. It looks very likely that Costa was prepared to keep schtum about how badly things had been managed until she heard what he had said in his press conference. Now, there’s a detailed and damning list of shortcomings for all to see.
Finally, and most practically, he has left his club in a worse position than if they’d just let her get on with it – training is underway under assistant coach Jean Noël Cabezas with the first of those confirmed-too-late friendlies supposed to be on Saturday. They need a new manager, and potential candidates might be forgiven for having some reservations about going to work for a club that apparently can’t organise a meeting.
Bizarrely, it looks like he is continuing to dig. Asked if he had any replacements lined up, he replied “non mais j’en ai déjà appelé une” (no, but I’ve already called one). Une. Reportedly Corinne Diacre, former international and the first woman to get her DEPF (Ligue coaching qualification). If that’s true, she will presumably have even more reservations about the job than other candidates might.
So, it’s a right mess. I thought Helena Costa was taking a risk by taking the job in that the reaction to the team’s performances would be focussed on her; as it turns out, her team never kicked a ball under her management. That’s just about the worst worst case scenario possible; for her, for the club, and for the chances that a woman will manage a men’s team in the future.