The summit of French women’s football will take place on Saturday, May 4, in Montpellier, land of the pioneers of the discipline, between two Ile-de-France clubs: Paris Saint-Germain and FC Fleury 91. A great first in the short history of the Women’s French Cup, the first final of which took place in 2002 between Toulouse and FC Lyon. The qualification of the two clubs, after the ouster of Paris FC by Paris Saint-Germain in the semi-finals, marks the rise in power of women’s football in Ile-de-France, even if it acts as an illusion.
The region has three first division clubs, out of 12, where only Paris Saint-Germain plays in the elite among boys. But its weight in women’s football as a whole – French and international – is far from being comparable with men’s football. Often described as “the largest breeding ground in the world”, the region provides 10% of the top 5 European men’s players. The ratio is three times lower on the women’s side, with only 3.67% of players from Ile-de-France playing in the elite of the Old Continent, mainly in D1 Arkema (55 of the 61 players listed in the European top 5 ).
Ile-de-France talents in “waste”
The difference is also felt in the French team. Of the 23 players called up by Hervé Renard during the last gathering of the French women’s team, only five are trained in the region, compared to 13 among Didier Deschamps’ latest nominees. “There is no talent problem in Ile-de-France”, however, assures Antoine Ferreira, recruitment coordinator for the women’s section of Paris FC for more than four years. But if these promising young players do not reach the high level, it is more due to a structural problem.
“We are not on the same system as the boyscompares Fabrice Abriel, coach of FC Fleury 91. Not all clubs have a training center, let alone pre-training [entre 11 et 15 ans]. There is no national under-17 championship, up to 15 the girls still play with the boys…“A national problem therefore, but accentuated by certain trends specific to Ile-de-France. Traveling the region in search of new talents for the training of Paris FC, Antoine Ferreira notes a “loss” Ile-de-France talents.
The reason ? Parisian educators who are a little cautious with their young shoots in clubs, who encourage them to join clubs far from Ile-de-France, although rich in women’s clubs, in order to assert themselves in the nine other clubs of the French championship . But in quasi-amateur women’s football, few entities are able to provide the human and financial resources necessary to properly support these uprooted footballers. A D1 Arkema club, for example, accommodates some of its young Ile-de-France residents, minors, in Airbnbs rented by management and made available on weekends, without supervision, to prevent them from making the return trip.
“The lack of structures in women’s football is the players who pay for it.”
Antoine Ferreira, women’s recruitment coordinator at Paris FCat franceinfo: sport
“There are many players with enormous talent that I have known in Ile-de-France, who are three times stronger than some, whom I knew at the same age, who play in D1 today. But They were accompanied”deplores Antoine Ferreira.
The Parisian clubs which became aware of the problem gradually relied on local training to fill their flag teams. The women’s recruitment coordinator for PSG talks about how his club stopped relying solely on talents from outside to concentrate on its Titis, like Jade Le Guilly or Laurina Fazer, still at the club today : “With this generation of 2003-2004, we managed to make the club understand that you still have very high level training, so you have to rely on it.”
Upcoming training centers
The youngest players in the Ile-de-France region are benefiting from the structural improvements made by Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC in reception, training, sports organization, staff, etc. “We might believe that they were born at the right time, but above all it is because the clubs organized themselves so that they could flourish and continue to progress.he supports, in order to propose the development projects missing until now.
The French Football Federation also recently put in its two cents by requiring future residents of the Professional Women’s Football League to have a training center. Each club must integrate at least 30 players aged 15 to 20 into its own structure, following specifications similar to those put in place to obtain approval for boys. A small revolution in women’s football, but which only imposes the minimum on a discipline already well behind the times.
Pre-training will be the new role of the Hope Centers, a completely new area for French women’s football. Until now, these eight centers were the only recognized female training centers across France, with only one based in the Paris region: that of Clairefontaine. Only Olympique Lyonnais and then Paris Saint-Germain could boast of offering the same infrastructure, or even better. In men’s football, these poles are little considered and entering them is in no way a guarantee of ending up professional. But in the absence of other structures offered in the four corners of France, they have long maintained a strong importance in women’s football.
Women’s football still very regionalized
“A player who is on pole is ratedexplains Antoine Ferreira. Clubs that do not have a recruitment unit today will look directly in the centers. We will say that she has an open door in a professional club more easily than an average player.” The better geographical distribution of women’s training induced by these centers is felt even in the French team: the last 23 players called up by Hervé Renard came from 14 different regions.
Moreover, at the last census in April 2024, the region with the most licensees was… Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, with its 31,685 players. Ile-de-France is certainly not far behind with its 29,873 licensees, but far from the 304,089 male players counted in the region. “It’s not easy to be a young girl who wants to play football in Paris, because you won’t necessarily have a place on a women’s team. So sometimes you play on a boys’ team, you can have problems related to the locker room, how I change when I come, how I fit in, etc.”points out the Paris FC recruitment coordinator.
Ile-de-France players who prefer cities
It is also sometimes the fault of certain conservative circles. “To avoid having to deal with that, you have a lot of young girls who don’t join a club but who still play football: down the street from their homes, at the City stadium…” And who are therefore not among the FFF licensees. The problem is also linked to the pitch crisis that Ile-de-France is going through, where due to a lack of available stadiums, women’s teams are often the ones from whom training sessions are taken away. The Covid crisis has also pushed certain clubs to cut their budgets and sacrifice… the women’s section.
And since money is the crux of the matter, the absence of training compensation in women’s football – money paid to amateur clubs when a young person trained at the club signs as a trainee in a professional club – does not necessarily encourage the training teams for boys to put the resources on the girls. “It would be interesting if the investment that is put into the women’s sections of the clubs could have a certain reward.”supports Mohamed Coulibaly, whose AAS Sarcelles club now has two of its former players in the Paris Saint-Germain first team (Naolia Traoré and Anaïs Ebayilin).
“There is a bright future for women’s football in the Ile-de-France region.”
Mohamed Coulibaly, technical youth manager at AAS Sarcellesat franceinfo: sport
The trainer also notes that PSG has gradually taken the place of Olympique Lyonnais in the hearts of young Ile-de-France players, who find themselves more and more in the Parisian squad, made up of no less than 17 players from the region. Most of them also play in the French youth team and form these new generations of Parisians who are finally benefiting from the structures put in place in recent years. On the latest French under-23 list, eight players were trained in Ile-de-France and four others – Vicki Becho, Naomie Feller, Laurina Fazer and Jade Le Guilly – are in the France A team and U23.
“The circuit is starting to reverse itself and more and more players, parents, even educators are sensitive to the PSG, Fleury or Paris FC project. It’s a good thing for us if we manage to keep the big talents from the enormous pool that Ile-de-France represents And I hope that in the five, six or seven years to come, the French team will have approximately the same composition as that of the boys. “, analyzes Antoine Ferreira.
From Sarcelles, Mohamed Coulibaly sees the number of little girls coming to sign up for football skyrocketing, a sign for him of “big job” of the League of Paris to feminize its members. The numerous invitations to matches sent by the three professional clubs in Ile-de-France to amateur clubs in the region also allow the youngest to dream of a football career, where the current players of the French team often grew up without an idol, and even fewer local models.