The French coach, Corinne Diacre, is not willing to leave her position, four months before the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. One day before the meeting of the executive committee of the French Football Federation (FFF) that will decide the future of the coach, Diacre has shown herself to be “fully determined” to continue leading the team. “I am fully determined to fulfill my mission and, above all, to fulfill France during the next World Cup,” said the coach in a statement sent to the AFP agency.
Sources close to the Federation point out that Diacre would be close to being dismissed, but she refuses to leave on her own foot and attributes the criticism to a “personal showdown” in “a smear campaign that is astonishing for its violence and dishonesty “. “My detractors do not hesitate, regardless of the truth, to attack my personal and professional integrity, four months before the World Cup”, denounces Corine Diacre.
At the helm of the blues since 2017, his leadership has long been questioned by some internationals, but the situation has now gone much further with the resignation of the captain of the national team Wendie Renard, which was followed by other pillars of the team such as Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani. “I cannot give my endorsement to the current system that is very far from the demands that the highest level requires,” Renard assured on February 24. The coach, who assures that she has remained silent until now for the good of the team, affirms that she has felt “great suffering due to the succession of slander, lies and ambitions of one and the other”.
The statement ends with a request to the president of Lyon, Jean-Michel Aulas, one of the four members of the special commission that was created a week ago to prepare a report on the current situation and who have met with all parties, including the selector, in the last days. Aulas stated after some of these interviews that Diacre could not continue leading the team, but the coach now assures that he assured her that, after having heard various testimonies, he is willing to consider the situation “objectively and impartially” and have rectified his initial words.
Former player of the French national team and the first woman to sit on a men’s First Division bench, at Clermont-Ferrand, Diacre has led the French team in 64 official matches, with 52 wins and only six losses. She was a semifinalist in the last Eurocup and a quarterfinalist in the previous one (2017) and the 2019 World Cup.
Despite these results and having a contract in force until 2024, Diacre’s situation is, in any case, quite intractable: a dismissal could give the impression that the players have the power, while keeping her in her position would force France to play a World Cup without its three main assets.
A hypothetical departure of Diacre would open the search for a successor at the helm of the French team. The names of Gérard Prêcheur (PSG), Sonia Bompastor (Lyon), Sandrine Soubeyrand (Paris FC), Eric Blahic (ex-Deacon of Diacre) or even Hervé Renard, current coach of Saudi Arabia, were mentioned internally or by the press in the last days.