It is an earthquake whose tremors have not finished being felt and shaking French football. This Friday three executive players from the France team, captain Wendie Renard then Kadidiatou Diani and Marie-Antoinette Katoto, announced their desire to no longer wear the blue jersey. In question ? The management that they consider calamitous – without ever naming it directly – of coach Corinne Deacon. The three players evoke, among other things, a decried “management”, a “system far from the requirements of the high level”, mixed “results” …
A kind of “Knysna” in the feminine – in reference to the episode of the strike of Raymond Domenech’s players at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa – which the French Football Federation would have done well. The body is indeed already mired in a crisis of governance with the cases concerning its president Noël Le Graët.
A few hours after the press releases from the three “rebellious” players, the Federation spoke about the situation. A succinct press release in which she declares to have “taken note of the statements of Wendie Renard, Kadidiatou Diani and Marie-Antoinette Katoto” and announces that her next Executive Committee, on February 28 and which was initially to decide on the situation of Noël Le Graët, “will take up the question” of the French women’s team.
The message ends with a sort of reminder, a warning, in which the “FFF would like to remind you that no individuality is above the institution of the French team. »
“A salutary cry of alarm” for the players’ union
For its part, the UNFP, the union of professional football players, greeted in the evening in a press release “a salutary cry of alarm” and “extremely courageous” pushed “by our three Blues”. A cry that “must serve as a catalyst and push all the stakeholders to finally take into consideration the concrete consequences of this delay that we have accumulated over the years and whose paroxysm is denounced at the highest level today, within the France team, ”continues the union.
“It is becoming urgent that all the stakeholders finally push in the same direction to speed up the process without waiting, which will benefit everyone, including the internationals. In any case, this is what the UNFP is asking for! “, concludes the press release.