The coach of the French women’s soccer team, Corinne Diacre, has been dismissed from her post on Thursday due to disagreements with several of the team’s most important players, five months before the start of the World Cup, the Federation announced.
Diacre, who had a contract until 2024, will leave his post and a commission will be in charge of finding a replacement with an eye toward the Australia and New Zealand event between July 20 and August 20.
The coach, who has led the French team since 2017, has been on the fence since the captain, Wendie Renard, withdrew from the team in disagreement with her work, a path followed by two other important players, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani .
“Irreversible dysfunctions”
The interim president of the French Football Federation (FFF), Philippe Diallo, had commissioned a report on the situation of the women’s team whose conclusions have brought to light “irreversible dysfunctions”.
“In view of these elements, it has been decided to put an end to Corinne Diacre’s mission as head of the women’s team,” the FFF said in a statement.
The commission commissioned by Diallo, which carried out several interviews over the last few days, also with Diacre herself, found that there is “a very important fracture with key players and has revealed a distance from the demands of the high level ”.
“This fracture has reached a point of no return that harms the interests of the team,” says the FFF, which despite everything recognizes Diacre’s total involvement in his work leading the team.
Diallo, who took over the reins of the team on an interim basis after the recent resignation of Noël Le Graët, accused of sexual harassment, wants to take advantage of Diacre’s replacement to give “a new global ambition in favor of women’s football” and the selection, with an eye on the next World Cup and the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.
The commission, in which the presence of Jean-Michel Aulas, president of Lyon, women’s European champion, stands out, must interview different candidates for the position and recommend an appointment to the president.
Crisis since February
The FFF also considered that the way in which several players expressed their disagreements with the coach, through social networks, “is not acceptable”, so it will create a mediation instance for the future.
The crisis within the French women’s team erupted on February 24, when Renard, the charismatic captain of the national team and of Lyon, announced that she was ending her international career due to disagreements with the situation in the team, although she did not mention Diacre.
“I cannot give my endorsement to the current system that is very far from the demands required by the highest level,” said the player, who in the past had had many frictions with the coach.
Subsequently, it was the Paris Saint-Germain soccer players Katoto and Diani who followed in their footsteps by assuring that they were putting their participation in the national team on hold.
Diacre, who was questioned by the commission last Tuesday for more than two hours, broke her silence on Wednesday and, faced with rumors that her dismissal was imminent, said she felt she was the victim of a “personal reckoning.”
The 48-year-old coach, the first woman to sit on a bench in the men’s first division in France, at Clermont, complained that her sporting balance was not taken into account in her criticisms, with 52 wins and only six losses in the 64 games directed.
His record includes three wins in the modest France Tournament, but in major competitions his best performance was the semifinal of the last Euro Cup, to which are added the quarterfinals of the previous one (2017) and the 2019 World Cup played in France.
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