Bernadette Constantin

Bernadette Constantin (born March 29, 1963 in Barbezieux ) is a former French football player , coach and association official.

Club career

As a 7-year-old Bernadette Constantin joined the football club in her home community and played regularly in its boys' team. Since women's football was not yet legalized in France at that time, the club officials asked the opponent before each game whether he had any objections to the participation of a girl; This openness - other girls, such as the later national team colleague Sandrine Roux , initially had to "disguise themselves as boys" - she rated very positively in retrospect. At twelve, however, she had to look for a club that also ran women's teams, and so she moved to ASJ Soyaux in 1975 , where she was regularly used in the first team from 1977. The midfielder played exclusively for this one club until 1996, despite requests from other clubs in France and even Sweden . But after the regular trips from Barbezieux to Soyaux, 40 kilometers away, had seemed like “a trip to the other end of the world” as a teenager , she later felt no interest in a change. She also felt at home at ASJ, to which the friendship with her club mates Martine Chapuzet , Florence Rimbault and Sylvie Bailly , who also came from Barbezieux, contributed, and she was also successful in sport there. In 1978 she became a national player and in 1980 she was in a final for the national championship for the first time , in which Soyaux lost 2-0 to Stade Reims , the "series women champions" of those years. She then accepted the offer from Reims to go with their wives on a friendly game trip to Indonesia , where they played in Djakarta in front of 80,000 spectators.

1984 then followed the win of the French championship title after a 1-0 final win against VGA Saint-Maur . In 1986, 1987 and 1989 the Charente team also made it to the national finals, and Constantin was involved in all of the matches. But their respective remained only the second rank, and in the 1989 final, it was - at least one of their former, according to opponents of the memory - even the "primary responsibility" for Soyaux 'defeat: the penalty shoot 4 for: to play decision, the 5 CS Saint-Brieuc emanated , she was the only one to miss her penalty. In her last season (1995/96) - in the meantime the title was no longer played in a regional championship finals, but in a single-track first division - she only won the unofficial runner-up with ASJ Soyaux.

Then, after more than 20 years as a player, she moved to the club's coaching chair for several years until he was relegated for the first time in 2010 . Her main job is as a clerk in the Soyaux Sports Department. Since the French Football Association changed its organizational structure in 2011, Constantin has been Vice President of the Ligue du Football Amateur (LFA), which is responsible for all amateur football, including women . She has also been one of the vice-presidents of ASJ Soyaux since the beginning of 2017.

In the national team

Bernadette Constantin was only 15 when national coach Francis Coché made her first appearance in the French women's national team against Wales in June 1978 . In retrospect, she described how this first invitation had impressed her:

“Meeting all of the Reims players who were our role models was an extraordinary event. It seemed to me as if my mind had left my body and was watching from outside what was going on. [...] At the beginning, when I had to take a leave of absence from school for the Équipe de France , I did not dare to tell my teachers the real reason - for fear that they would think I was a boor. "

Eleven months later, in her second international match, she scored her first goal in the blue jersey against Belgium in Brussels ; after another use it was not taken into account for two and a half years. It was not until early 1982, in the run-up to the first women's European championship organized by UEFA , that the coach brought her back to the circle with which France played its European Championship group games; there Constantin was part of the starting line-up in all six matches, and this remained so until the end of Coché's tenure. His successor Aimé Mignot, however, did not regularly consider them again until the spring of 1989. After another two-year hiatus from 1991 to 1993, seven more international matches followed, the last against Portugal in March 1994 . In 1993 she even led her team into the stadium as the captain against Poland .

Bernadette Constantin's 44 international A matches, in which she scored four goals, also included several clashes with national teams from German-speaking countries. She played three times against Switzerland (in the two undecided European Championship preliminary round matches in 1983 and on the occasion of a 3-1 victory in 1987) and twice against Germany , with the French losing 2-0 in 1987 and 1991 respectively.

Palmarès

• French champion: 1984 (and runner-up in 1980, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1996)
• 44 international matches with 4 goals for France

literature

• Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2003, ISBN 2-911698-25-8

Web links

• Constantin's data sheet on the website of the French Football Association

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 127
2. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, pp. 128/129
3. ↑ see the 1979/80 season overview at rsssf.com
4. ↑ ^{a b} Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 131
5. ↑ see the season overview 1983/84 at rsssf.com
6. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 88
7. ↑ see the current staffing of the Bureau du Conseil d'Administration of the LFA on the website of the French association
8. ↑ according to the article " Nicolas Goursat does not see the end of the championship in the coaching bench " from May 4, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
9. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 129