The withdrawals on Friday of Wendie Renard, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani add to a long list of divisions at Les Bleues since Corinne Deacon took office.
For six years, the life of the France team has not been a long calm river. Latest episode: the triple withdrawal of executives Marie-Antoinette Katoto, Wendie Renard and Kadidiatou Diani, who pointed out on Friday February 24 “the management of the French team and the values transmitted“, And “the current system far from the requirements required by the highest level.”
Three days after the last gathering of Les Bleues, and five months before the next World Cup, this new episode of tensions is added to a long list of crises. between the locker room and Corinne Deacon, whose methods are increasingly openly criticized.
Goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi says stop
It must be said that as soon as she took office in August 2017, the first female coach of a professional men’s club (Clermont, from 2014 to 2017) made an impression by removing the captain’s armband from Wendie Renard. “As long as I am in office, Renard will no longer be captain”, then declared the coach, without justifying her choice. She will finally change her mind four years later, conceding “a stupidity”. “Sometimes I say stupid things. I don’t change but I evolve. I’m still stubborn despite everything”, she justifies herself.
With her desire not to reserve any preferential treatment, Corinne Deacon has never done anything in lace. In 2019, after the elimination in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in France, against the United States, she had strongly criticized Eugénie Le Sommer in public, not hesitating to lay the blame for this failure on her shoulders. of the top scorer in the history of the Blue.
The following year, it was the titular goalkeeper, Sarah Bouhaddi, who was the first to openly attack Corinne Deacon. In an interview with OLTV, she claimed that “win a title with this coach” was “impossible”, announcing to put his international career on hold. The guard even added: “I could put my two hands to cut that the France team will not win the Euro (in 2022) if Corinne Deacon remains in office.” The sequel proved him right.
Henry and Le Sommer, executives set aside
But the most emblematic cases remain those of Eugénie Le Sommer and Amandine Henry, dismissed for many months. After being unselected in the fall of 2019, the latter confided in Canal +, without mincing words: “It’s not nice to say but when the selection is approaching, and you see your name on the list, there are two feelings that mingle, there is joy and there is fear. (...) When she called me, the call lasted 15 seconds. I will remember it all my life. She said to me ‘Amandine, the list comes out tomorrow, you won’t be there in relation to your current performance’. I’m speechless for two seconds. I told him ‘Ok, good game, goodbye’. That’s all. If it’s a sporting choice, you try to remobilize your player, you tell her: ‘don’t worry, you’ll be fine, you’ll come back to your best level’. But there, this discussion will remain engraved in my heart. It hurt me, I was really touched.”
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Amandine Henry then explains that she suffered the consequences of a discussion between “les Lyonnaises” and the president of the French Football Federation, Noël Le Graët, about Deacon’s methods, in particular during the 2019 World Cup: “Humanly, I saw girls crying in their room. Me, it happened to me too, because I wanted to live this World Cup, but it was total chaos.” About this estrangement which plagued the locker room for many months, Noël Le Graët did not flinch in 2021: “They can pull their hair out, I don’t care.”
Except that in the meantime, the Blues did not shine at the Euro, for which Corinne Deacon had chosen to deprive herself of Eugénie Le Sommer. The coach then invoked sporting reasons, despite the form of the top scorer in the history of the Blue, with whom she has been at odds for years. Then coach of Olympique Lyonnais, Reynald Pedros testified: “It’s a very complicated relationship between the players and the coach. I recovered the players who were psychologically very affected. We had to discuss each time, put them back well.”
“They go to the France team out of obligation, not for pleasure. They go to the France team with the ball in their stomachs.”
Often questioned about these multiple clashes, Corinne Deacon, always supported by the president of the federation, denounces a pack of rebels. Despite the deleterious atmosphere, she was extended her post several times. She tries several times to calm things down, in particular by giving the captain’s armband back to Wendie Renard, or by recalling Amandine Henry punctually.
These tensions and the still virgin record of the France team did not, however, tarnish the image of the coach in the eyes of the FFF, which extended it until 2024, i.e. after the 2023 World Cup and the Paris Olympic Games. But Noël Le Graët being in the hot seat, the positions of Wendie Renard, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani could reshuffle the cards, five months before the World Cup, and after many years of latent crisis.