Élodie Woock

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Élodie Woock (born January 13, 1976 in Mont-Saint-Aignan , Département Seine-Maritime ) is a former French soccer player who has won five national championship titles and twice the national cup with her clubs. In addition, she was one of the 20 most frequently used national players in France well into the 21st century. Since then she has been working as a trainer .

Club career

Born near Rouen , Élodie Woock was a versatile and gifted athlete from an early age. In tennis , she finished 15th in the French rankings as a 13-year-old; soon after, she put her "interest in not only playing against others but also with others" into action and joined the US Colomiers basketball team . As a teenager and despite her height of just 1.62 m, she played with this in the third highest league in France. She didn't get into football until she was 18 when she was persuaded to join a women's team at the University of Toulouse , where she had started her teacher training. From then on, her competitive sports career developed rapidly; the first division Toulouse Olympique Aviation Club signed Woock in the same year (1994), and less than twelve months later, she made her debut in France's senior national team (see below) .

In the following eight years she played for TOAC, a club closely associated with the aircraft manufacturer Aérospatiale , which from 1996 called itself Toulouse Olympique Aérospatiale Club and whose women's division joined FC Toulouse in 2001 . 1999 succeeded the used in midfield or defense Élodie Woock then also the first win of the French championship, which Toulouse was able to defend in the following three seasons. In addition, after completing her studies, she earned her living as a sports teacher. When a national cup competition for women was introduced in France in the 2001/02 season , the first winner was "Téfécé" - the common French abbreviation for Toulouse Football Club - and, in connection with the simultaneous championship title in Division 1 , Woock belonged to also to the first winners of the doublé .

Before the 2002/03 season, France's national coach Élisabeth Loisel recommended her regular players to prove themselves in one of the strong foreign women's leagues in order to develop through the stronger competition there. Élodie Woock, who at the time also had an offer from Arsenal London , followed this advice and signed a contract with 1. FFC Frankfurt . That the Frankfurt women , whose squad was really “peppered” with players of recognized class such as Birgit Prinz , Steffi Jones , Renate Lingor , Louise Hansen , Sandra Minnert and the whimsical sisters Pia and Tina , a woman from France, which at the time was only second class in international comparison obliged, justified their trainer Monika Staab with Woock's individual qualities:

“In Élodie, good technical skills are combined with a combative attitude and the ambition to keep improving. She can also read a game faster than others. This is all the more fascinating as she did not grow up with football. "

The Germans had already been able to get an idea of ​​these characteristics shortly before, when they were only able to eliminate Toulouse in the semi-finals of the European championship competition after two close matches. The Arsenal ladies had noticed her in a very similar way the previous round. With Frankfurt, Woock won both the German team at the end of the season Championship as well as the DFB-Pokal , in which she was substituted in in the final against FCR 2001 Duisburg after just under half an hour. In addition, she reached the European Cup semi-finals again ; on the way there she had scored a total of three goals against Shamrock Rovers and HJK Helsinki .

After this very successful year, she returned - mainly for professional reasons - to Toulouse FC, in whose league fraud she played until 2009. However, she was unable to win any other titles in these years.

In the national team

Élodie Woock made his debut in an international match against Canada in the French A-selection in April 1995 , and their performances shown there as in the club meant that the then national coach Aimé Mignot also considered them in six other matches this calendar year. He did this also at the European Championship in 1997 , where they played all three Bleues games in the preliminary round, at the end of which France only had to retire due to the slightly worse goal difference compared to Spain . Mignots successor Élisabeth Loisel the just 22-year-old Woock in two friendly matches made in early 1998 even the captain . She was also part of the squad at the 2001 European Championships , but was missing in the opening match in Ulm against the Norwegians , was only substituted in against Denmark in the second half and was back in the starting line-up against Italy .

Two years later, following her engagement in Frankfurt , Élodie Woock was also part of France's squad at the World Cup in the USA , for which the French had qualified for the first time in their international history. Against Norway, South Korea and Brazil Loisel put them from the opening whistle at one - but even with Woocks third major tournament came Bleues not have the preliminaries out. Until March 2004, she increased the number of her international matches to 78 and then ended her international career, in which she won France's highest win to date (2012), the 14-0 win against Algeria in May 1998, one of her four Hit contributed. She only played once against the German women (1-0 win in April 2003), and against Switzerland there were two games (1-1 in April 2001 and a 2-1 defeat in August 2002).

Palmarès as a player

  • French champion: 1999 , 2000 , 2001 , 2002
  • French cup winner: 2002
  • German champion: 2003
  • German cup winner: 2003
  • 78 international matches for France (4 hits)

Activities after the playing career

Already as a player, Élodie Woock trained Toulouse's second women's eleven, who led her to the third division championship and to winning the South of France Cup in 2009, and who continued to look after her the following season. In the 2011/12 season Woock was the head coach of the second division team Étoile Sportive Saint-Simon and the following year with the first division women of AF Rodez , with whom they secured relegation. In addition, Woock worked as a sports teacher; in 2015 she was employed at the Paul Sabatier University . Also in 2015 she took over the trainer function for the male B-youth of the Toulouse Fontaines Club , which has a reputation for its good youth work. This makes Élodie Woock the first woman to hold this post in France's highest league of this year.

literature

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

Web links

Notes and evidence

  1. ↑ a b Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 168
  2. ↑ see the season overview 1998/99 at rsssf.com
  3. ↑ a b Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 171
  4. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, p. 100
  5. ↑ see the competition data at rsssf.com
  6. ↑ see the article on the double title of 2009 and the 2009/10 season squad of the women on the Toulouse FC website
  7. ↑ see the article on the transfer period in the summer break 2013 on the website of the French Football Association
  8. ↑ see the article “ Élodie Woock, la pionnière du Toulouse Fontaines ” from June 23, 2015 at foot31.fr
personal data
SURNAME Woock, Élodie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Mont-Saint-Aignan , Seine-Maritime department