This July 6 begins the Women’s Euro football. And if there is still progress to be made in parity within football, there is better. Like AS Monts: this Indre-et-Loire club went from two players to 70in just three years!
Despite everything, the clichés remain
“I have already been told that I cannot play football in the playground”, says Lise, one of the young recruits of AS Monts. Eglantine, twelve and a half years old, experienced the same problems: “Boys told me I’d suck at football!” But she sees more and more examples of female players around herlike her sister, who pushes her to go beyond these criticisms: “I didn’t think of doing it, but I saw it and it inspired me.”
A situation that one of the coaches Anouk Plaine, 18, did not experience when she started at the Monts club in CM2. “I was with a girlfriend only, otherwise it was only boys.” She does not have a good memory of her beginnings. “The training sessions were still very separate, we didn’t always have the same exercises, we were apart from the group.” She is happy today to have finally co-created the women’s section in her “heart club.”
– Solene Gardre
More Female Football Idols
Around her, mindsets are changing “for example at the level of football idols”explains the other Women’s coach, Romane Tessier. “Before it was just Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, etc… Now there is Eugénie Le Sommer, Wendie Renard… Players from the France team who are starting to gain momentum and to be more further followed.”
Despite this development, “the girls at the club are often very mature and have the strength of character to go beyond clichés and criticism”explains Anouk Plaine. Like the very young Mila. The people who criticize her? “I don’t care, they think what they want. I thought about it and told myself that football is for me.”