Challenged by many members of the French team after the non-selection of Amandine Henry, which brought up several tensions buried under the carpet, Corinne Diacre is once again confronted with her method: a management through terror that has already done damage during her first experience with the pros, in Clermont. By Maxime Brigand, with Théo Denmat Thursday 22 October
It is the story of a locker room transformed into a saloon, in several stages. First there was the preparation for the 2019 World Cup and a press conference held one day in May, at the Palais des Congrès, a few weeks before the start of a World Cup in France. Armed with dark circles and a pair of eyes transformed into revolvers, Corinne Diacre came to unfold the program for the coming weeks and asserting that the goal was "to hurt ourselves" and that her battle plan was "well structured, with no room for emotion". A few days later, Les Bleues' coach gathered her players together at seven o'clock in the morning to perform a series of physical tests on an empty stomach. A promise made, a promise kept. The promise in question: "Over the first three weeks, the players bodies are going to suffer enormously, so the girls won't have time to think. I'm telling you, they're going to suffer." What's next? After a World Cup that was fragile in the game, ending with an elimination in the quarter-finals against the United States (1-2), Corinne Diacre once again shot and aimed at one of her players, Eugénie Le Sommer, during an interview given to Téléfoot. It is necessary to add to this episode the fact that one year earlier, Wendie Renard had lost her armband, and that in the wake of the World Cup, the assistant of Diacre, Philippe Joly, had tried to leave, worn out by his collaboration with the one who took over the helm of the boat France in the summer of 2017.
Refused at first, Joly's departure was finally confirmed at the beginning of January 2020 after a big discussion with Corinne Diacre. There have also been many discussions over the last few months. Diacre had to explain herself to Jean-Michel Aulas, annoyed by the behavior of the coach with the players of OL. In January, she was also received at the FFF headquarters by Noël Le Graët in order to take part in a conciliation meeting with Wendie Renard, at the end of which the boss was clear with the two women, asking them, according to comments reported by RMC, to "work together for the good and the future of the French team, without needing to be friends". Last week, following the non-selection of Amandine Henry, Renard nevertheless chose to turn on Canal + again: "We need to bring back a little more serenity and above all positive energy to be able to be fully focused on the field. It is important to have the self-confidence necessary to express ourselves." In other words, the question is now on the table: is it still possible to imagine a future for Corinne Diacre on the bench of the French team?
This situation raises other, deeper questions and brings to the table the question of a management by terror chosen by Diacre since the beginning of her coaching career. Questioned in the spring of 2019, Corinne Petit, her former player at Soyaux, warned: "What you have to understand is that she is not there to try to please people. It's either you stick with her or you don't, but she moves on." Sometimes with her head down, often without feeling. Corinne Diacre is often portrayed as "rigid" compared to a wall, and this is explained first of all by the fact that she has always moved forward alone, that she has made her place for herself alone and that she has always been respected alone. This may have pushed her in the past to do too much, as when she made her first appearance in the Clermont first team locker room in the summer of 2014. The goalkeeper Franck L'Hostis, who was present, saw a woman who "unpacked her CV. I did this, I did that, like this, like that... She wanted to impose some. We were curious, it was new, we were open. But having a strong character doesn't mean acting like a dictator." For those who know the former captain of the French team well, this is a classic "test phase" for her management.
Problem, by wanting to impose her setting in Clermont, from where the historical assistant of the club, Jean-Noël Cabezas, was quickly ejected, Corinne Diacre also put a hell of a mess.The local press was suddenly denied access to the club's offices, the closed-door sessions were multiplied, communication was locked and the coach started to annoy some players. "At practice, we all had to have the same matching socks," says Anthony Lippini, for example. Usually long or short, everyone does what they want. That wasn't the case anymore and some guys were getting pissed off," says Lippini. At the same time, tank tops were also banned, and Diacre refused to let some of the players stay in their rooms in the middle of Ramadan in the name of collective unity. The story even goes so far as to say that ice cubes in glasses of water were banned. If Claude Michy, the president of Clermont-Ferrand, affirms that Corinne Diacre has made the club "grow in its world of operation", some employees had problems with the "walk or die" of a future NT coach who rarely bothered to explain her choices. L'Hostis, still: "The first year, she put seven or eight players aside and told us: “I'm the coach. You're the player, you don't have to understand." She had managed to instill fear." Someone close to the club would later talk about an Attila-style management, where "every ear that protruded was cut off. "She was trying to break us" says another former member. Anthony Lippini sums it up: "When you go her way, you have her confidence. But as soon as you start to stand between her and her goals, she won't hesitate to fire you for the good of her group." The proof: in March 2015, the player was removed from the group for a trip to Ajaccio, under the pretext that Lippini had a good relationship with Oliver Pantaloni, the ACA coach. To Diacre's credit, this management has paid off, with Clermont having its best season since 2012 first, then finishing in a fine seventh place in Ligue 2 with good picks, before the Croix native was named one of the top four coaches of the year in the UNFP 2016 trophies.
The attempted putsch and the tears
Internally, however, the situation was boiling between a medical staff that was close to resignation and captains with whom Corinne Diacre almost always got into trouble, such as Karim Djellabi, whose vision of the adventure is as follows: "I tried to act as a buffer, like my predecessors. She didn't measure the size of the gap she had dug between herself and the team. In my corner, I did everything I could to make sure the group didn't explode, because a lot of people wanted to fight. Successful coaches are those who are close to their players, who listen to the feedback. In the end, I think she's putting aside the human side of coaching and overplaying a character." That's also what she's been accused of at Les Bleues: Diacre would not be receptive to states of mind, military in her approach, and had to deal with an attempted putsch after the World Cup organized by several players. In response, the coach had organized several individual interviews, two players would have come out crying, according to L'Équipe. More than a year later, with Euro 2022, the 2023 World Cup and the 2024 Olympics on the horizon, is it still possible to create a calm atmosphere? (hell no) That's a good question. This week, Noël Le Graët once again came to Clairefontaine to try to ease tensions. Good luck.
