Still, when Diacre was first approached by the national federation to take the reins of France’s women’s team in 2016, her instinct was to stay put. “I’m not leaving, I’m faithful, because you’ve trusted me,” she told Michy. He told her he was ready to let her go. He didn’t want her to “waste her career.”
Many argue that a strong performance at this tournament could take Diacre to a job at a club in Ligue 1, France’s top division, but as much as Diacre was a pioneer, she remains, five years after her debut at Clermont Foot, an exception: While other women have since earned France’s top coaching diploma, none have trained a professional men’s team.
“She’s a model for many of us, but it takes time, and soccer in France remains a male-dominated world,” said Sarah M’Barek, the third woman to have earned the B.E.P.F., France’s highest professional coaching diploma.
Diacre is less optimistic. “You can fight for a day or two, a week or two,” she said about the constant pressure of being a woman coaching in the men’s game. “But for weeks or years? It’s really complicated.”
Meant to Be a Coach
Diacre was born in 1974 in the northern town of Croix, and like most girls who started to play soccer at a young age at that time, she did so with boys. After her family moved to central France, the teenage Diacre joined A.S.J. Soyaux, a pioneering club that had been dedicated to women’s soccer since the late 1960s.
All who knew her then agreed on one thing: She was the one who worked the most, the one who had the highest expectations for herself and for others. She was great at juggling, but not the best in distance running, yet she would exhaust herself to tears during physical tests.
If soccer was already at the center of Diacre’s life, it became a refuge after her father died in a car accident when she was 14. “He had such high expectations for her,” said Claude Fort, a former coach at Soyaux, who along with his wife, Marylin, hosted Diacre for a year in 1988 since her parents lived three hours away.
Source : NYtimes
