The first woman to become coach of a professional men’s team in France, Corinne Diacre is still waiting for a successor.
Eight months after her brutal dismissal, Corinne Diacre is still without a position. The former coach of the France team, thanked by the Federation after the putsch launched by captain Wendie Renard, nevertheless had some requests. Particularly in Ligue 2 where the Northerner has visibly left good memories.
Corinne Diacre made football history by becoming the first woman to sit on the bench of a professional men’s team. In the summer of 2014, after the about-face of the Portuguese Helena Costa, the president of Clermont, Claude Michy, asked her to sit on the bench of the Auvegnat club, then in Ligue 2. “I wasn’t sure if I would have twice this opportunity. I couldn’t refuse. I knew that by accepting I would be seen as the only woman in a man’s world, and that’s exactly what happened. From my point of view, Clermont needed a coach and they recruited me for this position”she explained afterwards.
Always a unique case
Corinne Diacre quickly becomes a phenomenon, which she has difficulty coping with, quickly refusing to discuss her gender. “I feel that in the eyes of some I lack credibility, that my past in the amateur world and my status as a woman still do not come across. I passed my diplomas, the training was long and difficult, but I got there,” she objects. And success is there. So much so that she was named best coach in Ligue 2 during her second season.
Some leaders have not forgotten her and therefore checked her name after her ouster from the Blues. But six years after her departure from Clermont, Corinne Diacre remains a unique case. No other woman has sat on the bench of a professional club since. The choice is certainly limited since only Sarah M’Barek, Sonia Haziraj and Elisabeth Loisel also have the required diploma. While waiting for Sandrine Soubeyrand, who will be part of the next promotion. And this also applies to the other major European championships where no women play at the professional level.
However, it was in Italy that the first woman was named to the bench of a professional club. In 1999, Carolina Morace, a former Transalpine international with 150 caps and renowned television commentator, became the coach of Viterbese, then in the third division. A choice of the whimsical Luciano Gaucci, who did not hesitate to play a Serie A match for Saadi Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, in Perugia in 2004. The experience also turned into force and the technician resigned after two matches, its president forcing the arrival of a male assistant rather than her assistant Betty Bavagnoli, with whom she had worked for fifteen years. A quarter of a century later, the situation has not changed…
