At the kick-off of the match between Fleury and Lyon, Friday, September 20, at the Robert-Bobin stadium in Bondoufle (Essonne), the French women’s championship will officially enter the professional world, after years of waiting to see the former D1 Arkema take this step. This change of identity will be clearly visible to all: the banner displayed at the entrance of the actresses onto the pitch will bear the logo of the new Professional Women’s Football League (LFFP), the players will then pose in front of an Arkema Première Ligue sign, the new name of the championship… On the surface, a number of new features, some of which have already been put in place during the past season to prepare for this big leap.
“Our goal is to have a championship that will be among the best in Europe, perhaps even in the world”boasted Jean-Michel Aulas at the launch party of this new league, on April 29. Appointed president of this new LFFP, the former Lyon manager assures that the French Football Federation (FFF) will itself invest between 50 and 70 million euros over the next five years to launch this league, which covers D1 and D2, and will begin for this season with an investment estimated at 10 million euros. Enough to lead women’s clubs to structure themselves, after years with little supervision on infrastructure or staff composition.
At the heart of these changes is the establishment of a club license giving access to several levels of federal subsidies, with a minimum of 350,000 euros. “Teams playing in the Arkema Premier League championship must provide proof of a salaried organization to ensure the development of the women’s team and to respond to changes and the professionalization of the practice”writes the LFFP in its specifications. Certain skills may be “transversal to the whole club”that is to say that it is not required to recruit for these positions and that those already existing for the men’s team can be shared.
Among these essential profiles, the league lists those of administrative manager, team manager, communications referent, stadium referent and media referent. The same referent can occupy several positions, up to a maximum of two. Prerequisites are also required at the staff level, with a weekly medical presence of at least ten hours and a physiotherapist for part-time. Not enough to expand the staffs excessively, many of which remain made up of only five people: the coach and his full-time assistant, a physical trainer, a goalkeeping coach and a part-time video analyst. There are also no requirements in terms of the budget invested by clubs each season in their women’s section, while some managers, such as Montpellier, have already announced a reduction in the amounts allocated.
“After more than five years in D1, I have seen very little change except in the infrastructure, where we have fewer synthetic pitches, more grass pitches, lists an experienced player from the French championship. The move to the professional league did not bring us any changes.” What refutes Marie-Hélène Patry, general delegate of Foot unis, the professional football employers’ union: “If we want to have the club license, we have to put in place a certain number of elements that represent costs. This is likely to increase the budgets of the women’s sections rather than reduce them. And that is the objective, because behind a budget, there is also, in principle, a capacity to have more performances on the field, perhaps potentially more partners. It is a virtuous circle.”
Other players find that they play more often in the “big boys stadium” than before, but in no way thanks to the change in status, since the number of these matches remains fixed at three per season. “For now, there is just the name [du championnat] that has changed, but I think that for us as players, until the collective agreement is signed, there will be no real change.”sums up Laëtitia Philippe, goalkeeper for Le Havre and a D1 women’s player since 2007.
Because although the championship officially became professional on July 1, it is starting without a collective agreement, due to the failure to reach an agreement between all parties, although it was initially supposed to be announced on March 1. “We are still not committed to signing a collective agreement that would meet a minimum, a solid basis for the social status of the players to be considered professional”notes Fabien Safanjon, vice-president of the National Union of Professional Footballers and member of the high-level commission for women’s football. He points the finger at certain clubs which “are not yet open or inclined to want to give girls the same things as boys”.
To illustrate this, he takes the example of the part-time contract provided for in the federal statute, based on 21 hours per week for boys, compared to only 17.5 hours for girls. “Today, clubs don’t want to hear that for girls, they want to stay at 17.5 hours. But when you know that most girls on part-time contracts are paid on the basis of the minimum wage, the difference between a 21-hour contract and a 30-hour contract is 17.5 hours. [comme les hommes] or 17.5 hours represents an effort of 100 or 150 euros per month for a player who will earn 600 or 700 euros. So we are not breaking the economic balance of the clubs”he assures, lamenting that, in a league supposed to be professional, “Some players wake up in the morning wondering if they’ll be able to eat their fill.”Behind this professional championship label, there are in fact players forced to work part-time as supervisors in colleges or as maintenance workers.
In total, only 11 players per team will have to be under full-time professional contract, as last season, within a squad often made up of around twenty players. In the absence of a collective agreement, the minimum salary is set at 21,840 euros gross per year, as provided for in a sector agreement linked to professional sport, which is just a little above the minimum wage (21,203 euros gross per year). Light years away from what is done in Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain, where the best players have salaries with several zeros: Marie-Antoinette Katoto (696,000 euros), Kadidiatou Diani (600,000 euros), Wendie Renard and Ada Hegerberg (540,000 euros). A disparity that made Sonia Bompastor, coach of the OL women’s team last season, say that she wanted “the end of a two-speed D1, in order to have consistency in developing women’s football”.
“Between us, we think that the level will drop, because many players have left, very few big names have arrived, even PSG and OL have not recruited any. There is a leveling down.”
An experienced D1 women’s player, under cover of anonymityto franceinfo: sport
Behind the scenes, the players would even indicate “don’t be afraid to strike”.“They don’t want to go there, like us. But they have it in mind, they know that it’s part of the tools to make themselves heard, unfortunately”adds the union representative. Without a collective agreement, there is a lot of uncertainty for players who will get injured, get pregnant or have administrative disputes. And if the parties manage to reach an agreement during the season, the implementation of the future collective agreement should in any case be postponed until next season, for administrative reasons.
Among the sticking points are the questions of end-of-career pay and image rights. “Their salary corresponds to their work, but if they have the opportunity to put a little butter in the spinach by exploiting their image, that will be a plus.“, unfolds Fabien Safanjon. So many points of contention that lead to a kind of fed-up feeling in clubs outside the top 3.
“With the years I spent in D1, I thought that professionalization would come much sooner than that. Every year for ten years, we talked about it, and in the end, we see that it still hasn’t been signed.”
Laëtitia Philippe, goalkeeper of Le Havreto franceinfo: sport
“I feel like it’s a bit of hot air, as is often the case in France with women’s football,” sadly notes a player who has been playing in D1 for five years, stuck in the middle of the table. For her, as for others, the strike is far from being a taboo, but she wonders: “We haven’t talked about it among ourselves but I saw it on social media… I don’t really know what could work other than that, that we don’t participate in this first day, but I also don’t know if there are enough players who are ready to do it. I have the impression that everyone is now ready to relive a season like that and that in the end, we will do without the convention for the moment.”