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ABSTRACT
The drive to develop women’s football in France, a game 100 years old albeit one long-stigmatised, was thrust into high gear in 2011. Since then, a confluence of events and cultural changes, from on-field results and officials’ investment of greater resources to winning the 2019 World Cup host bid, greater mediatisation of women’s players, and more – including the spectacular 2010 meltdown of Les Bleus in South Africa – have combined to energise and grow the game. This newfound dynamism was unforeseen a decade ago and illustrates some of France’s biggest World Cup legacies: the up-front investments underpinning the sport’s development during the 2010s, and the ways the country has repackaged itself as a champion of women’s football and women in football, forever changing the face of ‘le foot féminin’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a historian, author of The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958–2010, and a Research Associate with the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS, University of London where she works on sports diplomacy.
Notes
1 Wendie Renard, ‘Life at the End of the World’, The Players Tribune, January 17, 2019, https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/wendie-renard-life-at-the-end-of-the-world.
2 Brigitte Henriques, interview with the author for ‘French Women are Taking Over Soccer’, The New Yorker, June 10, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/french-women-are-taking-over-soccer.
3 Henriques, ‘French Women are Taking Over Soccer’.
4 For more on the rise of these countries to dominate global women’s football, see Jean Williams, A Beautiful Game: International Perspectives on Women’s Football (Berg, 2007).
5 By July 2015, Les Bleues were third in the world – a rank they held until September 2017 and only regained in June 2018. FIFA, ‘Women’s Ranking’, https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/women/rank/ranking_20180622/ (accessed January 14, 2019).
6 Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle (L’Harmattan, 2003), 11.
7 See Pierre Bordieau, La domination masculine (Seuil, 1998).
8 See Mary Lynn Stewart, For Health and Beauty: Physical Culture for Frenchwomen, 1880s–1920s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), Richard Holt, ‘Women, Men, and Sport in France, 1870–1914: An Introductory Survey’, Journal of Sports History 18, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 121–5; and Jacques Thibault, ‘Les origines du sport féminin’, in Les Athlètes de la République, ed. P. Arnaud (Privat, 1987), 331–9.
9 Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 25.
10 Femina Sport’s early matches had an admission fee of 0,50 francs. Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 29.
11 This is different from women’s football in Britain of the era, which was covered by some of the press.
12 Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘How the Great War Made Soccer the World’s Most Popular Sport and Led to Its First Viral Moment’, The Athletic, November 16, 2018, https://theathletic.com/653722/2018/11/16/how-the-great-war-made-soccer-the-worlds-most-popular-sport-and-led-to-its-first-viral-moment/.
13 Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 169.
14 The Fédération Française du Football Association (FFFA), which eventually became today’s FFF, was founded in 1919. For more on this era, see Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 13.
15 Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 177. There is a body of work on the Vichy regime’s attitudes and policies towards sport and women’s sports, including Fatima Terfous, ‘Femmes et activités physiques sous le régime de Vichy: politiques et enjeux médicaux’, Genre & Histoire 21 (2018), https://journals.openedition.org/genrehistoire/3181, and Christophe Pécout, ‘Le sport dans le France du gouvernement Vichy (1940–1944)’, Histoire Sociale 45, no. 90 (November 2012): 319–37.
16 Based on paper presentations at ‘Upfront and Onside: The Women’s Football Conference’, National Football Museum, March 2018, some of which appear as articles in this collected volume. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/upfront-and-onside-the-womens-football-conference-tickets-41423084561#.
17 Jean Williams, interview with the author for Krasnoff, ‘How the Great War Made Soccer’.
18 Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin au XXème siècle, 149.
19 See Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958–2010 (Lexington Books, 2012).
20 Patrick Clastres, ‘Générations athlétiques et éducations corporelles. L’autre acculturation politique des presidents de la Ve République’, Histoire Politique, no. 23 (February 2014): 73.
21 For more on why the Fifth Republic wanted to cultivate a culture of sport that ultimately would feed into the nation’s elite sports programmes and produce athletes who could win for the nation, see Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus.
22 See Claire Duchen, Feminism in France (Routledge, 2013); Dorothy Kaufmann-McCall, ‘Politics of Difference: The Women’s Movement in France from May 1968 to Mitterrand’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 9, no. 2 (Winter 1983): 282–93; and Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945–1968 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), among others.
23 Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet, ‘Mixité et non mixite: l’exemple du football féminin’, Femmes, Genre, Histoire, no. 18 (Coéducation et mixite, 2003): 171.
24 For more on changing French outlooks towards football, see Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘Devolution of Les Bleus as a Symbol of a Multicultural French Future’, in The State of the Field: Ideologies, Identities and Initiatives, ed. David Kilpatrick (Routledge, 2018), 149–57.
25 For more on the French Olympic tradition see Thierry Terret, Histoire du Sport (PUF, 2016), Histoire des Sports (L’Harmattan, 1996), and Les paris des jeux olympiques de 1924 (Atlantica Biarritz, 2008). The Olympics provided an avenue for French sportswomen to gain acclaim, particularly 1960s alpine skiers like Christine and Marielle Goitshel, while others like 1940s swim champion and later International Olympic Committee Director Monique Berlioux helped shape the international sports movement. Yet, because the women’s Olympic football tournament was inaugurated in 1996, it is only more recently that French players can utilise the Games to etch their story into national Olympic pride.
26 For more on the sports crisis and its implications for how the country was viewed by foreign publics, see Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus.
27 Gilles Montérémal, ‘L’Équipe: médiateur et producteur de spectacle sportif (1946–1967)’, Le Temps des médias, no. 9 (February 2007): 107–20.
28 During that first season, some 2170 licenses were recorded for female players out of the country’s total 758,559 players. FFF, ‘1970: Honneur aux dames’, https://www.fff.fr/articles/la-fff/histoire-du-football-francais/details-articles/213-544085-1970-honneur-aux-dames and FIFA, ‘First Ladies Pave the Way’, https://www.fifa.com/womens-football/news/first-ladies-pave-the-way-1414187.
29 This effort was portrayed in Comme des Garçons (2018), which rebooted the conversation about the 1960s pioneers. For greater details, see Jeré Longman, ‘In Women’s World Cup Origin Story, Fact and Fiction Blur’, New York Times, June 25, 2019.
30 FFF, ‘1970: Honneur aux dames’.
31 Henriques, ‘French Women are Taking Over Soccer’.
32 Sonia Bompastor, interview with the author, October 9, 2015.
33 Ibid.
34 Laura Georges, interview with the author, February 19, 2018.
35 Ibid.
36 Krasnoff, ‘Devolution of Les Bleus’.
37 Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘France’s World Cup Title will Again Help Women’s Soccer’, espnW, August 9, 2018, https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/24319560/france-2018-world-cup-title-help-build-momentum-2019-women-world-cup.
38 Krasnoff, ‘France’s World Cup Title’.
39 FFF, ‘Statistiques Licences—Licencies—Saison 1999/2000’, https://www.fff.fr/common/bib_res/ressources/430000/6500/150202145443_1999_2000.pdf.
40 This training programme for girls was relocated from Clairefontaine to the National Sports Institute (INSEP) campus in Paris’ Bois de Vincennes in August 2014, so that the country’s top aspiring females could attend school and train alongside other elite teenaged athletes already in residence at INSEP.
41 Girls whose families lived at a distance from Clairefontaine lodged on-campus during the week and returned home to their families on the weekends and at holiday times; Georges’ family lived in the Parisian area, and at press time it is not clear whether she lived at home or lived at Clairefontaine during her entire formation period. For more see Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘“You Open Their Minds”: Why France Moved Their Women’s Football Academy Away from Clairefontaine’, The Athletic, June 27, 2019, https://theathletic.com/1050454/2019/06/27/you-open-their-minds-why-france-moved-their-womens-football-academy-away-from-clairefontaine/.
42 Some of the professional players that Georges trained with include French international and Juventus midfielder Blaise Matuidi. Krasnoff, ‘France’s World Cup Title’.
43 Henriques, ‘French Women are Taking Over Soccer’.
44 Camile Abily, interview with the author, March 4, 2018.
45 For a more detailed treatment of 2010 and its aftermath, see Krasnoff, ‘Devolution of Les Bleus’.
46 Stuart Murray and Geoffrey Allen Pigman, ‘Mapping the Relationship between International Sport and Diplomacy’, Sport in Society 17, no. 9 (2014): 1098–118.
47 Béatrice Barbusse, Du sexisme dans le Sport (Anamosa, 2016), 97–103.
48 This record was shattered in 2015. Déborah Coeffier, ‘Pourquoi le foot féminin à la cote’, Liberation, February 8, 2015, https://www.liberation.fr/sports/2015/02/08/pourquoi-le-foot-feminin-a-la-cote_1197031.
49 ‘L’aventure des bleues s’arrête en demi-finale’, Le Monde, July 12, 2011, https://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2011/07/13/foot-feminin-l-aventure-des-bleues-s-arrete-en-demi-finale_1548543_3242.html.
50 ‘Le foot féminin veut enfin séduire’, July 16, 2011, https://archives.varmatin.com/article/toulon/le-foot-feminin-veut-enfin-seduire.590293.html.
51 ‘Jean-Michel Aulas évoque le football féminin’, JDD, July 2011, https://www.lejdd.fr/Sport/Football/Actualite/Jean-Michel-Aulas-evoque-le-football-feminin-pour-le-JDD-359255.
52 Dominique Marchetti and Karim Souanef, ‘La médiatisation du football: un jeu sous contrôle. Les économies de la production de l’information sur les compétitions européennes en France’, Pôle Sud, no. 47 (February 2017): 61.
53 Jean Williams, Globalising Women’s Football: Europe, Migration and Professionalization (Peter Lang, 2013), 14–15.
54 Florine Duranton, ‘Foot Féminin: faut-il gagner pour enfin être intéresse?’ Le Nouvel Observateur, July 11, 2011, https://m.leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/171529-foot-feminin-faut-il-gagner-pour-devenir-interessante.html#.
55 Bompastor.
56 FFF, ‘D1 Féminin Media Guide 2018–19’, Fédération Française de Football Service de Presse, 2018, 34.
57 FFF, ‘Guide du développement de la pratique feminine’, Direction Technique Nationale, undated but given to the author in 2018.
58 For more on this aspect in historical context, see Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus.
59 Romain Daveau, ‘Le football féminin avance dans la bonne direction’, SportMag, September 13, 2018, https://www.sportmag.fr/sports-collectifs/le-football-feminin-avance-dans-la-bonne-direction/.
60 Anthony Hernandez and Rémi Dupré, ‘Noel Le Graet: ‘On pourra atteindre les 300,000 licenciées dans cinq ans’, Le Monde, December 7, 2019.
61 The first, her immediate predecessor at Clermont, Helena Costa, quit after a few months on the job, citing the club’s ‘lack of respect’ and ‘total amateurism’, which included signing players without her knowledge and the sporting director and president’s unwillingness to respond to her attempts at communication. See ‘Helena Costa: Female Coach Says Clermont are to Blame for Her Exit’, BBC Sport, June 26, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/27984653.
62 This was done at the suggestion of Thierry Braillard, who later rose to be Secretary of State for Sport. Claire Gaveau, ‘Comment Aulas a propulsé l’OL Féminin au sommet du football européen’, RFI, May 24, 2018, https://www.rtl.fr/sport/football/comment-aulas-a-propulse-l-ol-feminin-au-sommet-du-football-europeen-7793515502.
63 Renard, ‘Life at the End of the World’.
64 Mathieu Rollinger, ‘Égalité Salariale: Le nul Impossible?’ So Foot, October 26, 2017.
65 Sine Agergaard and Nina Clara Tiesler, Women, Soccer and Transnational Migration (Routledge, 2014), 3.
66 Jean Williams, ‘“Soccer Matters Very Much, Every Day,” Player Migration and Motivation in Professional Women’s Soccer’, ed. Agergaard and Tiesler, 20. Williams delineates three phases of player migration in women’s football, the pioneers of the 1920s–1970, the era of rapid professionalisation from 1970 until 1999, and the present globalisation of women’s football since 1999. For more, see Williams, Globalising Women’s Football.
67 Williams, Globalising Women’s Football, 15.
68 For more, see Krasnoff, ‘“You Open Their Minds”’.
69 Gaveau, ‘Comment Aulas a propulsé l’OL Féminin au sommet du football européen’.
70 Abily.
71 Hernandez and Dupré, ‘Noel Le Graet’.
72 ‘Think Football 2019: “Tout a démarré en 2011 avec France-États-Unis sur la TNT”’, News Tank Football, February 7, 2019, https://football.newstank.eu/fr/article/printable/139545/think-football-2019-demarre-2011-france-etats-unis-tnt-gross-fff.html.
73 ‘Think Football 2019’.
74 ‘Coupe du Monde Féminine 2019: Toutes les audiences de la compétition en France’, Media Sportif, updated August 6, 2019, https://www.mediasportif.fr/2019/06/08/coupe-du-monde-feminine-2019-toutes-les-audiences-de-la-competition-en-france/.
75 ‘Coupe du Monde Féminine 2019’.
76 ‘D1 féminine: “La couverture de Canal + n’a pas d’équivalent en Europe”’, News Tank Football, September 24, 2018, https://football.newstank.eu/fr/article/printable/129404/d1-feminine-couverture-canal-pas-equivalent-europe-b-henriques-fff.html.
77 Patrick Mignon, ‘Le psychodrame du football français’, Esprit, August/September 2010, 7.
78 See Anthony Hernandez, ‘Mondial 2019 de football: les Bleues sans Marie-Antoinette Katoto’, Le Monde, May 2, 2019, and Nathan Gourdol, ‘Comment Marie-Antoinette Katoto (PSG) a encaissé sa non-sélection pour la Coupe du monde’, L’Équipe, May 3, 2019.
79 Henriques, ‘French Women are Taking Over Soccer’.
80 Coeffier, ‘Pourquoi le foot féminin a la cote’.
81 ‘Think Football 2019’.
82 Georges.
83 Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘The House that Aulas Built: Why the 2019 World Cup’s Biggest Matches are Being Played in Lyon and not Paris’, The Athletic, July 5, 2019, https://theathletic.com/1063798/2019/07/05/the-house-that-aulas-built-why-the-2019-world-cups-biggest-matches-are-being-played-in-lyon-instead-of-paris/.
84 Krasnoff, ‘The House that Aulas Built’.
85 Renard, ‘Life at the End of the World’.
86 Abily.
87 FFF, ‘D1 Féminin Media Guide 2018–19’.
88 Anthony Hernandez, ‘Football: en France, les femmes à la conquête des terrains’, Le Monde, December 7, 2018.
89 For more on sports diplomacy see J. Simon Rofe, ‘Introduction: Establishing the Field of Play’, in Sport and Diplomacy: Games within games (Manchester University Press, 2018), and Murray and Pigman, ‘Mapping the Relationship between International Sport and Diplomacy’, and Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘The Hidden Superpower of International Hoops Diplomacy’, The Athletic, November 14, 2018.
90 See Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus.
91 Ibid. Despite the poor results of the French national basketball team at international competition in the 1960s, in 1966 Les Tricolores, as the team was then known, became one of the first Western national basketball teams to play in the People’s Republic of China following the 1964 establishment of diplomatic relations between Paris and Beijing. For more on this, see Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, ‘Les Bleus en Chine: Shows of Strength via Swishing Hoops’, International History Review (forthcoming 2020).
92 For more on how the Fifth Republic sought to use sports to portray a winning, rejuvenated image to the international world, see Krasnoff, The Making of Les Bleus.
93 This multipronged initiative is designed to increase French influence in global sport, to prioritise sports as part of the MFA’s portfolio, and to integrate sports more integrally into the country’s foreign economic policy. Government of France Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Infographie: les grands axes de la diplomatie sportive’, ca 2017, https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/politique-etrangere-de-la-france/diplomatie-sportive/infographie-les-grands-axes-de-la-diplomatie-sportive/.
94 The 2015 EuroBasket tournament, which was held in part in France, was the first step, but the real foundation was the 2016 UEFA European Championship. Since then numerous competitions have been held in France, including the 2017 Men’s World Handball Championship, 2018 Gay Games and Ryder Cup, leading all the way to the 2023 Rugby World Cup and 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. For more on international-sport-as-diplomacy see Murray and Pigman, ‘Mapping the Relationship between International Sport and Diplomacy’.
95 ‘Think Football 2019: “Pour le foot féminin, je préfère voir le verre à moitié plein”’, News Tank Football, Febraury 7, 2019, https://football.newstank.eu/fr/article/printable/139488/think-football-2019-foot-feminin-prefere-voir-verre-moitie-plein-f-samoura.html.
96 Amandine Henry, interview with the author, March 4, 2018.