ROTHERHAM, England — Corinne Diacre punched the air, allowed herself a shallow smile of satisfaction, then turned on her heel. She managed to dodge the first few staff members who ran past her on their way to join the celebrations on the pitch after France’s quarter-final victory, only to find her path blocked by Gilles. Fouache.
Fouache, France’s assistant goalkeeping coach, is not an easy hurdle: broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and the air of a friendly goalkeeper. Diacre, a fearsome central defender in her playing days, quickly recognized there was no way to get through. Fouache lifted the manager off of him in a brief bear hug and then sent him off as well.
Once he had, his smile faded. He sought out his Dutch counterpart, offered her a few words of congratulations and condolences, and then addressed his players. A handful received a pat on the back. Others were only offered immediate feedback on performance. He had come to Euro 2022 for business, not pleasure.
By some measures, that victory against the Netherlands last weekend was enough to ensure that Diacre had done his job. France had never made it past the quarter-finals of a European Championship before; Eve Périsset’s penalty, deep in extra time, finally ended the voodoo.
However, Diacre came to England with slightly higher expectations, as did his country. France, after all, is home to two of the most powerful women’s football clubs, reigning European champions Lyon and their arch-rivals Paris St.-Germain. Diacre had an unrivaled source of talent from which to create a squad.
For her, and for French football, it seemed reasonable to declare that reaching the final was the team’s “declared ambition”. On Wednesday night, she couldn’t keep it. France may have only narrowly lost to Germany, 2-1 in their semi-final in Milton Keynes, England, but they went down anyway. And that, unfortunately, gives Diacre a problem.
A couple of weeks after the 47-year-old Diacre and his players arrived in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the small town in rural Leicestershire where the France national team is based for this tournament, he chose a venue with a distinctly French name. is apparently a coincidence: a French magazine journalist contacted the team’s press officer to ask why no local youth team had been invited to watch a training session.
Such outreach initiatives are a staple of major tournaments, a fairly simple public relations stunt designed to thank the community for its hospitality. France, by contrast, had not contacted amateur teams at Ashby. The team, the journalist was told, was not in England to make friends.
It is tunnel vision that is characteristic of Diacre’s management style. She oscillates between aloof and acerbic towards the media, despite employing a “master” of public relations; she has admitted that communication is not her strong suit. She makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t enjoy the public aspects of her job.
With his players, he has not always fostered the most propitious relationships either. One of his first moves after taking charge of his country five years ago was to strip Wendie Renard, France’s totemic defender, of the captaincy.
Since then, she has managed to alienate several players from Lyon, the country’s dominant women’s team, to such an extent that Sarah Bouhaddi, the goalkeeper, claimed she had instilled a “very, very negative atmosphere”. Bouhaddi has subsequently said that she will not play for her country while Diacre is in charge of it.
Another veteran, Gaëtane Thiney, was dropped for criticizing Diacre’s tactics, and a third, Amandine Henry, was dropped after she described the French team during the 2019 World Cup as “complete and utter chaos”. The call in which Diacre broke the news lasted, Henry said, “14 or 15 seconds; I will remember it all my life.” More notable still was that Henry had inherited the captaincy from Renard; her banishment meant that Renard was restored to the post.
However, Diacre’s biggest bet might well have been his team for this tournament. Diacre was already without Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo, a legacy of the robbery scandal who has disrupted French football for much of the past year, but also chose to omit both Henry and Eugénie Le Sommer, France’s career leading goalscorer.
The manager defended the moves, citing the need to protect and preserve the “mentality” of her team. Her first results bored her. There were no signs, in France’s month in England, of club feuds poisoning the atmosphere between the players. The long-standing divide between Lyonnais and Parisians seemed to have evaporated.
Also, it wasn’t as if Diacre didn’t have players of impeccable quality to replace them. The depth of talent at his disposal was such that he could juggle his team for each of the first four games of the France tournament with no apparent decline in quality.
The problem, however, was that making those calls made Diacre a martyr to the outcome. Had France fulfilled their aspirations and reached Sunday’s final against England, they would have been vindicated; Leaving Henry and Le Sommer at home would have seemed like a coup, proof of his bold conviction.
That France have not done so means that it is almost impossible not to wonder if the result could have been different if two of the key players from the best club team in women’s football had been on the pitch, or even on the bench, available. to call in an emergency.
In truth, the border between those realities is thin and blurred. It depends on a moment, an instant: if France had been attentive when Svenja Huth picked up the ball on the edge of the penalty arearather than assume he was out of the game, then maybe he would still be in the tournament and Diacre’s call would have been worth it.
However, it is the manager who made that deal, who made it clear that the measure of success and failure was what she did, not how she did it. France arrived at Euro 2022 with a destination in mind. Now that you’ve fallen short, you can’t claim credit for the trip.