French women's national soccer team

France
France

Nickname (s)	Les Bleues (The Blues)
Association	Fédération Française de Football
confederacy	UEFA
Technical sponsor	Nike
Head coach	Corinne Diacre
Assistant coach	Eric Blahic
Record scorer	Marinette Pichon (81)
Record player	Sandrine Soubeyrand (198)
Home stadium	Changing stages
FIFA code	FRA
FIFA rank	3rd (2036 points) (June 26, 2020)
First jersey Second jersey
statistics
First international match France 4-0 Netherlands ( Hazebrouck , France ; April 17, 1971 )
Biggest win France 14-0 Algeria ( Cesson-Sévigné , France ; May 14, 1998 ) France 14-0 Bulgaria ( Le Mans , France; November 28, 2013 )
Biggest defeat Germany 7-0 France ( Bad Kreuznach , Germany ; September 2, 1992 )
Successes in tournaments
World Championship
Participation in the finals	4 ( first : 2003 )
Best results	Fourth ( 2011 )
European Championship
Participation in the finals	7 ( first : 1984 )
Best results	Quarter-finals ( 2009 , 2013 , 2017 )
(As of March 10, 2020)

The French national football team for women ( French Équipe de France de football féminin or just Équipe de France féminine A ) is the representative selection of French female football players for international games; it is based on the as Les Bleus called Männernationalelf also Les Bleues called. She played her first official international match on April 17, 1971 against the Netherlands ; the game ended with a 4-0 victory for the French and was the first women's international game recognized by FIFA . In contrast, the international matches that took place in the 1920s and 1930s are no longer considered official games these days.

Starting in the 1990s in particular, the French selection - parallel to the upswing of women's football in the country - qualified for a number of European championship finals, for the first time in 1984 and most recently six times in a row ( 1997 , 2001 , 2005 , 2009 , 2013 and 2017 ). Reaching the quarter-finals in 2009, 2013 and 2017 was the best result so far. The Bleues reached a World Cup finals for the first time in 2003 and then again in 2011 , when they achieved their greatest success to date with fourth place and thus qualified for the first time for the 2012 Olympic football tournament. They also qualified for the 2015 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games . At the 2019 World Cup , they were automatically eligible to participate as hosts, but failed again in the quarter-finals. Since reaching fifth place in the FIFA world rankings for the first time in March 2005 , the French women have been one of the world's best women's national teams. In December 2014, they moved up to third place. The public perception of the women's national team in France has not kept pace with this sporting upward trend up to the present.

Corinne Diacre has been training the French team since September 2017 . The record national player is Sandrine Soubeyrand with 198 appearances; Marinette Pichon , who is also no longer active, is the most successful goalscorer (81 hits).

history

The unofficial internationals between the world wars

French selection from 1920

Since the end of the First World War there had been a women's football company in France, which had set up its own organizations and structures due to the rejection of the “men's association” FFF or its predecessor, the Comité Français Interfédéral (CFI) . To this end, interested female athletes had founded the Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France (FSFSF) as early as 1917 . This also carried out international women's games, the first of which was a selection of three Parisian clubs on the occasion of an England tour in May 1920, against a company team, the Dick Kerr's Ladies , lost 2-0. English soccer players made a return visit at the end of October, when the two games at the Stade Pershing in Paris and in Roubaix in northern France each drew around 10,000 spectators. At the “First Olympic Women's Games” (March 1921 in Monte-Carlo ) a soccer tournament was announced, to which players from the women's club Fémina Sport Paris had traveled especially, but not played; Nor was this sport on the program at the women's world games organized by the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale from 1922 onwards .

The French won the first real international match of those “wild years” in February 1924 in Brussels (2-1 against Belgium ). The selection of the northern neighbors became France's most frequent opponent. With the decline of French women's football at the beginning of the 1930s, the early history of the women's national team came to an end: in April 1932, once again in Brussels, they separated 0-0 from the Belgians, against whom France played its last international matches in 1933 and 1934. At this time, the women's umbrella organization also ended its footballing responsibility.

Although FFF President Jules Rimet himself was a spectator at the Stade Pershing at the England game of 1920, the association does not officially recognize the matches between the wars to this day. At least at that time, this attitude corresponded to the widespread rejection of the practice of numerous sports by women, whereby the protagonists either referred to their alleged physical unsuitability, to the contradiction to the traditional image of women or to the "display" in front of a predominantly male audience:

“I agree that young girls do sports with each other on a rigorously cordoned-off terrain inaccessible to spectators. But that they are showing off [...] that they even dare to run after a ball on a field that is not surrounded by thick walls: that is not to be tolerated! "

- Henri Desgrange , editor of L'Auto , 1925

Legalization of women's football and beginning until the mid-1980s

year	competition	Participation placement
1982-1984	European Championship ( squad )	1st round (group stage)

It was not until the mid-1960s that women's football games, which were not legalized by the association, but were well attended and media-rich, began to appear again in France, and  permanent women's teams were organized - initially mainly in northern France and Alsace - with existing or newly founded clubs. When the Federal Council of the FFF (Conseil fédéral) , which was made up of 100 percent men, decided on March 29, 1970 to legalize women's football, there were already almost 2,200 female club players in the country. In retrospect, the association justified its step by stating that "the fighting commitment of women's football advocates has influenced the imagination of the 'stronger sex' in such a way that this sport can also be practiced in a way other than the usual way up to now". The sports historian Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet, on the other hand, assessed the motivation for this step with the interest of the officials in maintaining control of all football in the country. They had feared that the women, like in 1917, would found an autonomous association - a step that had already become a reality in French 15-a-side rugby a few weeks earlier. The FFF installed a women's football committee, the first chairman of which, Pierre Geoffroy , the Reims “women's football pioneer” , put together and trained the national team. In July and September 1970 there were two games of a French against an Italian selection, to which the association had given its permission, but refused to allow the French to compete on behalf of the FFF. Even in February 1971, the association still had a hard time considering the idea of ​​forming a real national womanhood. On the occasion of the invitation of the Fédération Internationale et Européenne de Football Féminin (FIEFF) to take part in Mexico in August of that year in the second women's world championship, which is now unofficial - the first, held in Italy in 1970 , was not in France - the Federal Council recommended there a club should represent France. A month later he gave his consent to the formation of a selection team, and this was accompanied to Mexico by Geoffroy, another FFF official and a league referee. The association bulletin France Football Officiel even published a photo of the tour group on August 11th. How difficult it was for the association is made clear by a letter from its General Secretary Michel Cagnion in February 1971: “In view of the reservations expressed by the European Football Union towards competitions that are not under its control, the FFF gives its permission for a private [sic !] Team takes part in the first women's world championship. "

In order to qualify for Mexico, this first sélection française had to face the Netherlands on April 17, 1971, with the French prevailing 4-0. Sélectionneur Pierre Geoffroy had used 15 players, most of whom came from Stade Reims . This encounter is the first women's international game recognized by FIFA since 2011 . Four months later, a squad of 17 players traveled to Mexico, which Geoffroy had formed from nine women from Stade Reims, three from other clubs in the north of France and one each from Rouen , Strasbourg , Mâcon , Caluire and Marseille . France lost 3-0 to Denmark in front of around 30,000 spectators and 1-0 to Italy , but prevailed 3-2 in the final placement game against England and came back as fifth in the World Cup.

France's national coaches
Term of office	Sélectionneur	Balance Sp: P&L (points per game)
1970-1988	Pierre Geoffroy	20: (a) 3-4-13 (0.65)
1978-1987	Francis Coché	30: 8-8-14 (1.07)
1987-1997	Aimé Mignot	85: 38-18-29 (1.55)
1997-2006	Elisabeth Loisel	110: 59-21-30 (1.80)
2007-2013	Bruno Bini	99: 69-16-14 (2.25)
2013-2016	Philippe Bergeroo	55: 42-5-8 (2.38)
2016-2017	Olivier Echouafni	15: 8-6-1 (2.00)
since 2017	Corinne Diacre	35: 27-4-4 (2.43)
(a) including the 4 disputed 1971 games Points per game calculated according to the 3-point rule

The FFF did not recognize these four games to this day, although it has now mentioned them more frequently in its publications; For the association, the match on November 28, 1971 against Italy (final score 2: 2) is still the first official international match for the Bleues . However, the problem of dealing with the recognition of early internationals is neither an exclusively French nor a purely national one; For a long time, the European and World Federation also had a hard time integrating women's football, which initially did not go beyond its “passive tolerance”. The UEFA decided in November 1971, a "transfer of control and organization by the national associations", and adopted in April 1973 general guidelines for this, while the FIFA only from 1987/88 to support financially women's football was ready after him until then "almost ignored ”. It was not until 1986, with the creation of a women's football committee, that she began to follow the unstoppable reality against the still prevailing resistance in her own house; In fact, she did not even begin to deal with the early history of international women's football in the run-up to the 2011 World Cup.

The results of 1971 in France were not suitable for determining the position in an international comparison. Fifth place in Mexico was achieved in an unofficial tournament - FIFA did not host recognized world championships until 1991 - with only six participating nations, and the even French record could not be repeated over a long period of time. The national team played only a few international matches - one in 1972, three in 1973 and 1974, two in 1975, one in 1976, three in 1977 and 1978 again - and the sporting performance was negative: eleven defeats and four draws resulted in just one victory (1973 against Ireland ) opposite. This didn't change until 1979 when France lost only one of their four games but won two. The 1980s began with three defeats in five matches, however, as the 1970s had gone overall. The public interest quickly waned and women's football had no lobby, nor did it enjoy any planned funding from the association; by 1977 a single, three-day training camp with 25 players had been held. This only changed under Geoffroy's successor, Francis Coché , who introduced courses for national players every two years, which, however, also had no notable success. Coché was by no means an unconditional advocate of women's football; rather, at the end of the 1970s, he had hoped that "the girls who practice this sport would later, as wives and mothers, support their sons' enthusiasm for football [sic!] with understanding". On the other hand, the “very authoritarian, strict and demanding trainer” recognized early on that better physical and tactical training than usual was required in the clubs .

From 1980 to 1986 inclusive, the Bleues lost an average of every second game (6 wins, 7 draws, 13 defeats). At the first tournament for the European Championship , which lasted from 1982 to 1984, they were eliminated in the first round . In France, only around 2,500 female soccer players had a player pass at that time. The lack of structures in club football also contributed to this stagnation of the women's national team. Although the FFF introduced an annual championship final round with the 1974/75 season , which was dominated by Stade Reims and AS Étrœungt until 1982 and then by VGA Saint-Maur and ASJ Soyaux ; But a unified, national league , in which the players would have been challenged much more regularly than just a handful of finals, was not created until 1992. As early as the 1970s, this meant that a good half a dozen French women - including internationals such as Nicole Mangas , Nadine Juillard or Ghislaine Royer-Souef  - signed on with one of the clubs in the Italian league , where they were also paid for their sporting activities . In view of the low frequency of international matches, it also took a long time before a national player was able to achieve the number of 20 internationals. This was achieved in November 1980 - including the Netherlands game from 1971 - as the first goalkeeper Marie-Louise Butzig from Reims, followed by outfield players Michèle Wolf ( FC Lyon , May 1981), who in 1984 became the first French woman to play the 30s. Brand exceeded and for the journalist Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau was the "first star of the 1970s", as well as Sylvie Bailly from Soyaux (February 1983).

A symbolic event within the FFF also took place during this period: in 1985, Marilou Duringer was the first woman to be elected to the Federal Council of the Football Association. She had played football in Schwindratzheim in Alsace since 1965 , was one of the first French women to hold an official player's license and then worked for decades as a volunteer functionary at FC Vendenheim . Immediately after her election she was appointed head of the national women's delegation, and she still held this position at the 2011 World Cup.

The "Mignot Era" (1987–1997)

year	competition	Participation placement
1987	European championship in Norway	not qualif.
1989	European Championship in Germany	not qualif.
1991	European championship in Denmark	not qualif.
1991	World Championship in China	not qualif.
1993	European Championship in Italy	not qualif.
1995	European Championship	not qualif.
1995	World Championship in Sweden	not qualif.
1996	Olympic Games in Atlanta	not qualif.
1997	European Championship in Norway and Sweden ( squad )	Group games

In 1987, the FFF appointed Aimé Mignot , a national coach for the first time, who had previously had successes as a player and coach in professional men's games . Many experienced national players like Bernadette Constantin saw this fact as a “sign of increased recognition”; In addition, the training methods changed fundamentally:

“Under Aimé it was finally real football; we started to learn about tactics and technique. That represented a real revolution in the history of the équipe de France . "

Up until then, Mignot made sure to increase this number right from the start of his term of office. His aim was to enable the players to practice more internationally and to improve coordination, understanding of the game and tactical behavior through more joint training courses immediately before the matches. After the Bleues had not been able to qualify for the European Championship in advance , they ended the year with five wins in six games. In 1988 France's women played double-digit international matches for the first time; however, their annual balances were negative again up to and including 1991, so that they were not represented in the final tournaments of the following European championships or in the first official world championship in China.

From 1992 Mignot's measures began to bear fruit, to which the concentration of forces in club football slowly contributed in the following years thanks to the introduction of a national first division. The French women continued to miss out on qualifying for all major UEFA and FIFA tournaments until 1996, and the first ever women's Olympic football tournament was also held without them. In the Mignot era, however, the national team not only grew together better due to the greater quantitative experience, but also increasingly dealt with particularly strong international opponents. During this time there were mainly international debuts against the USA , which the Bleues had met eleven times by 1997, Germany (four games) and China (two games). And even if France at first mostly lost out against them, the increasing experience had a countable effect; In all five years the international match record was positive, and the national women also qualified for the European championship finals in 1997 in Norway and Sweden , which included eight participants . There it was only the poor goal difference against Spain that prevented France from making it into the top four. In the immediate run-up to this European Championship, the women were also allowed to use the national training center in Clairefontaine - a privilege that until then had only been reserved for male footballers.

When Aimé Mignot ended his job as national coach in the autumn of 1997, he was able to look back on a very successful record: In 85 international matches under his responsibility, the French women had 38 wins, 18 draws and 29 defeats. During his tenure, France's record player Sandrine Soubeyrand and Marinette Pichon, the Bleues ' most successful goalscorer well into the 21st century , also made their national team debuts . The pillars of the “Mignot era” included Bernadette Constantin, Hélène Hillion-Guillemin , Françoise Jézéquel , Isabelle Musset , Sandrine Roux and Sophie Ryckeboer-Charrier .
In addition, in the course of the later 1990s, the football association continued the promising junior work with the A and B girls' national teams (now known as U-19 and U-17) and created a selection with the so-called U-21 with the young adult players should be introduced to the bleues . In 1996 the U-17s were in a final of the (not yet official) European Championships for the first time , the U-19s succeeded two years later . The FFF is hoping for long-term positive effects from the joint training camps between its U-16 girls and their German counterparts, which are regularly held as part of the Franco-German Youth Office .

Sustained upswing under the first trainer

year	competition	Participation placement
1999	World Championship in the USA	not qualif.
2000	Olympic Games in Sydney	not qualif.
2001	European Championship in Germany ( squad )	Group games
2003	World Championship in the USA ( squad )	Group games
2004	Olympic Games in Athens	not qualif.
2005	European Championship in England ( squad )	Group games

After the European Championship in 1997, Élisabeth Loisel , who had previously been very successful as a player and club coach and has been the Bleues coaching assistant since 1989 , replaced Mignot. In 1998, thanks in particular to the active support of the new chairman of the Direction Technique Nationale , the men's “world champion” Aimé Jacquet , she ensured that the women's and girls' national teams also had the opportunity to use the French “elite” Center technique national Fernand-Sastre in Clairefontaine could use systematically. Because she is convinced that in sport you have to take into account the "psychological and physiological differences, but in technical and tactical terms there is no difference between women and men in training". Furthermore, at the turn of the millennium, Loisel called for a professionalization in club football, but its implementation failed because of the "somewhat fearful association policy", as well as a girl and women-specific trainer training in Clairefontaine. In addition, she encouraged national players to change clubs to the strong foreign leagues, which, for example, Marinette Pichon and Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé (both went to the US professional league ) or Élodie Woock (to the German Bundesliga ) then completed.

In 2001 Loisel again led the Bleues to a European final and in 2003 to a World Cup finals for the first time, and even if France did not get beyond the group games in both tournaments, the rise of the French women to the top of the world is inextricably linked with their leadership. When FIFA introduced a world ranking list for women's national teams in 2003 , the French eleven initially ranked ninth, making them fifth-best in Europe after Norway, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. In 2005 - this year France had again qualified for the European Championship finals, in which, as in 1997, they were only eliminated after the group games due to the poorer goal difference - they climbed to fifth place and only had the Germans and Norwegians within UEFA before she dropped to seventh place worldwide at the end of Loisel's tenure.

Sandrine Soubeyrand

The trainer consistently continued the path started by Aimé Mignot and increased the annual number of courses and international matches; In the six years from 2001 to 2006, the national team played an average of 13 matches. As a result, five women were accepted into the international "100 Club" during Loisel's activity : Corinne Diacre , Marinette Pichon, Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé, Hoda Lattaf and Sandrine Soubeyrand. In addition, the improved "substructure" and the intensified cooperation with the colleagues responsible for the youth national teams had a positive effect, as Élisabeth Loisel brought numerous young players from the particularly strong U-18 / U-19 ( year-old European champions 2003 and vice-European champions 2002 , 2005 and 2006 ) made a national team player. With Australia , Brazil , South Korea and, among others, Austria , the circle of opposing women's national teams expanded.

Under Loisel, France also managed their first victory against the German women (2003), as well as the highest success in their international history to date (14: 0 against Algeria, 1998). At the end of their nine years at the helm of the Bleues, the French had an unprecedented record of 59 wins and 21 draws with only 30 defeats.

2007 to 2013: Consolidation at the top of the world

year	competition	Participation placement
2007	World Championship in China	not qualif.
2008	Olympic Games in Beijing	not qualif.
2009	European Championship in Finland ( squad )	Quarter finals
2011	World Cup in Germany ( squad )	Fourth
2012	Olympic Games in London ( squad )	Fourth
2013	European Championship in Sweden ( squad )	Quarter finals

Thiney (right) and Delie (back) at the 2011 World Cup group game against Germany

As under his predecessor, the French national team was only a spectator at the first two major tournaments under Bruno Bini , who was appointed coach at the beginning of 2007 . In 2009, however, she qualified for the European Championship and not only survived the group matches for the first time in her international team history, but also failed in the quarter-final against the Netherlands because two French women only hit the goal post in the decisive penalty shoot-out. There followed a year in which the French won ten of their eleven international matches and drew once, which enabled them to qualify confidently for the 2011 World Cup - without losing points, with 50-0 goals - and in the run-up to which they were even counted among the wider circle of favorites. The Bleues finished this World Cup in fourth place, and even if there were defeats against Germany, the USA and - in the game for third place - Sweden, their appearance had "made a difference in France for women's football". This performance also meant that the French women were one of only two European teams to secure a place in the field of participants in the 2012 Olympic football tournament, which they also finished fourth.

Bruno Bini (2011)

Even more than with Élisabeth Loisel, the team concept was at the forefront for Bini, as he pointedly formulated in 2011 when the French World Cup line-up was announced: “These are not the 21 best players in France, but the best who go far as a group in the competition can". He was helped by the opportunity to “form blocks” because in the French league the concentration on only four top clubs - and among these primarily on the Champions League winner of 2011 and 2012 , Olympique Lyon  - had progressed. Of the 14 women who formed the core of the team in the 2012/13 season (see picture on the right) , only five did not play for Lyon, namely Soubeyrand, Thiney (both from Juvisy ), Boulleau ( Paris Saint-Germain ), Delie and Meilleroux ( Montpellier ).

Sonia Bompastor

Bini, who brought the former national player Corinne Diacre to his staff as assistant coach , has improved the combination game and increased the offensive strength. The tactical formation was more like a 4-3-3 than a 4-5-1 system . He continued to trust in many of those players who had already developed into supports of the national team under his predecessor; with Sonia Bompastor , Laura Georges , Élise Bussaglia , Camille Abily and Louisa Nécib, five other French women crossed 100 international matches. In addition, the coach, who had previously been very successful with the French U-18 / U-19 selection ( European Junior Champion 2003 ), also helped numerous young female footballers to make their debut, including four U-19 European champions from 2010 . A premiere of another kind there was in December 2011, two "home games" as the French women in their Caribbean overseas department of Guadeloupe or Martinique fought out. In January 2012, Bruno Bini was named the world's third best women's coach of 2011 at the FIFA Ballon d'Or gala . However, at the 2013 European Championship , after having survived the preliminary round without losing any points , France was declared a title contender by numerous media and was eliminated again in the quarter-finals. Le Monde then said , given that the French women had missed a podium finish in a continental tournament for the fourth time in a row since 2009, they had “failed again at a crucial moment”, which the coach - “his part in the development of French women's football indisputable ”- after this“ relatively bad performance ”he had to ask about his own future.

In a total of 99 matches under Bruno Bini, the French record recorded 69 wins, 16 draws and 14 defeats; the French women moved up to fifth place in the world rankings, making them Europe's second best womanhood. Nevertheless, on July 30, 2013, the Executive Committee of the FFF unilaterally ended Bini's contract, which ran until 2015.

2013–2017: Bruno Bini's difficult legacy

year	competition	Participation placement
2015	World Championship in Canada ( squad )	Quarter finals
2016	Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro ( squad )	Quarter finals
2017	European Championship in the Netherlands ( squad )	Quarter finals

The appointment of Philippe Bergeroo as Bini's successor had surprised the media, who favored someone who already had practical experience with women's football - such as Bini's assistant Corinne Diacre, U-17 women's national coach Guy Ferrier , former U- 21 coach Gérard Prêcheur or the successful coach of the Olympique Lyon women, Patrice Lair . Bergeroo's first big task was to qualify the Bleues for the 2015 World Cup in Canada . To do this, he initially secured the services of France's record goalkeeper at the time, Sandrine Roux , who was responsible for training goalkeepers on his staff. Successful young players were also ready: The French U-19 women won the European championship in their age group in August 2013 . In order to introduce new players to the A-Eleven, the coach had set up a B-team (often referred to as U-23), which competes against A-teams “from the second European row” several times a year, since 2016 on Istria -Cup and was trained by Jean-François Niemezcki until 2020 , who also led the French national selection of female students to win the gold medal at the Universiade in 2015 .

Philippe Bergeroo (2015)

Bergeroo's first A-squad in autumn 2013 was based predominantly on female soccer players who had already been part of the “inner circle” under Bruno Bini; Unlike his predecessor, he relies on a "Parisian axis" (Houara, Delannoy, Georges, Boulleau) in the defense line, to which Renard was the only Lyons. With Marine Dafeur , Griedge Mbock Bathy and Sandie Toletti , the coach also appointed three 18-year-olds as well as other newcomers with Kenza Dali , Inès Jaurena and Amel Majri . Bergeroo has appointed Wendie Renard as the new Bleues captain, succeeding the resigned Sandrine Soubeyrand . Élodie Thomis made her 100th international match in February, Gaëtane Thiney in March 2014, Eugénie Le Sommer in March 2015, Sarah Bouhaddi in January and Marie-Laure Delie in March 2016.

The French achieved their first success in spring 2014 when they won the Cyprus Cup . France suffered their first defeat under the new coach in June 2014 at their 16th encounter. Nevertheless, his record of the 17 games of the season - including top opponents such as the USA, Brazil and Sweden - was very successful with 13 wins and only one defeat. His women also mastered the World Cup qualification with flying colors; they prevailed in Europe Group 7 without losing points with a goal difference of 54: 3. Among them was a 10-0 win in Bulgaria , the second highest away win in France's international history, which they followed up with a 14-0 win five days later in the second leg. With this only fourth double-digit victory - the third in a competitive game - Philippe Bergeroo was on par with Élisabeth Loisel (14-0 home win in 1998 against Algeria) and Bruno Bini (12-0 in Estonia 2009).

Bouhaddi Houara Georges Renard Boulleau Henry Abily Nécib Thomis (Thiney) Le summer Delie The 2015 World Cup

The Bleues had prepared for the World Cup finals in Canada from October 2014 by playing friendly matches against particularly strong opponents, defeating them all: Germany away, Brazil, the USA and Canada in front of their home crowd, the reigning world champion Japan at the Algarve Cup 2015 , in which France took second place. In the FIFA world rankings , the Bleues under Bergeroo worked their way up to third place in 2014, which they also held during the World Cup. The FFF stated that the goal for Canada was reaching a podium. But although the French women - apart from a defeat against Colombia in the group stage - trade media and opponents knew to convince them eliminated in the quarterfinals after a penalty shoot- out against their German adversaries. This encounter was also the 49th in a row without defeat against a European team (42 wins and seven draws, last defeat in the game for third place at the 2011 World Cup against Sweden). In addition, their performance as one of three UEFA representatives qualified for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro . Immediately after returning from Canada, the FFF extended Bergeroo's contract to summer 2017.

In the home match against Greece in June 2016, an EM qualifying game that has become meaningless - France's participation in the finals was already secured - the French won the 40th EM / World Cup qualifier in a row; their last point loss in this type of competitive game dates back to June 2007 (1-0 defeat in Iceland on the occasion of qualifying for the 2009 European Championship). Bergeroo had already had the "home" World Cup in 2019 firmly in view since 2015 , when the majority of the current player base will have clearly exceeded 30, and has repeatedly brought talented youngsters to the first team of the Bleues, most recently Amandine Guérin , Clarisse Le Bihan , Valérie Gauvin or Marie-Charlotte Léger . The most prominent victim of this measure was Gaëtane Thiney, who was no longer part of the starting lineup in all games during the 2015 World Cup and was no longer considered in 2015/16. Immediately after the 2016 Olympic tournament , playmaker Louis Nécib also ended her career for personal reasons.

At the Olympics in Brazil , France faced Colombia , the United States and New Zealand in the group stage . Colombia had already been group opponents at the 2012 Olympics (as well as at the 2015 World Cup finals), and the Bleues have already competed with the New Zealanders three times. In preparation for this tournament, the Bleues defeated China , whose coach Bergeroo's predecessor Bini, and Canada , which had prevailed four years earlier in the game for third place against France; against the latter, the French had to compete again in this Olympic quarter-finals, and again the North Americans thwarted French hopes of winning a medal.

Olivier Echouafni (July 2017)

For the early failure at this tournament, Bergeroo then blamed “mental problems with the players”. And although he was previously the national coach under whose leadership the French achieved the best point average per game, the association's top management dissolved the contract with Bergeroo a few weeks later. After Corinne Diacre canceled because she did not want to leave her club in the middle of the season, the FFF appointed Olivier Echouafni , a man in his mid-forties who had only coached two club teams ( SC Amiens , FC Sochaux ) in the men's field, as his successor . In his first roster he reactivated Gaëtane Thiney, Camille Catala and Julie Soyer and also invited several new, young players.

Echouafni had stated early on that numerous female soccer players had been overplayed and beaten; therefore he canceled an international trip to China that had been agreed for November and also decided not to play another friendly match in Europe until the end of the year. The meetings held in March 2017 in were for the European Championship preparation SheBelieves Cup meaningful. He also brought in Frédéric Née, a former striker, who is supposed to try to improve the recently relatively weak exploitation of opportunities - another central problem for the Bleues for the coach. Finally, he agrees with FFF President Le Graët that greater competition in the French league , which has been dominated by only three or four teams for many years, would help to raise the individual level of the national players even further.

The French women won the top-class invitation tournament in the USA; They remained unbeaten against England (fifth in the world rankings, 2: 1), Germany (second, 0: 0) and the hosts (first, 3: 0) and demonstrated approaches to better exploitation of chances against the English women than they did in the game the closing stages, and especially against the US.

At the European Championship 2017 , the team clearly missed the high expectations, only finished second in the group and had to return home early after the quarter-final defeat against England. And although FFF President Le Graët immediately afterwards expressed his confidence in Echouafni and guaranteed his continued employment until the 2019 World Cup in his own country, he introduced Corinne Diacre to the public four weeks later as the new national coach.

A woman should lead France to the title

year	competition	Participation placement
2019	World Cup in France ( squad )	Quarter finals
2020	Olympic Games in Tokyo	not qualif.
2022	European championship in England

After the French women had failed in the quarter-finals four times in a row at the international compulsory tournaments, the FFF hoped to finally achieve at least a podium place with the 43-year-old Corinne Diacre, but in fact to win the first major title in the women's division. The prerequisites for realizing this ambitious goal seemed favorable - not only because France hosted the 2019 World Cup, but also because of Diacre's athletic vita. With 121 appearances, she was the French record player for a long time, was a World Cup participant in 2003, assisted Bruno Bini for three years at the Bleues, then coached a women's club team and, from 2014, a men's professional team in Ligue 2 . But again the Bleues did not get beyond the quarter-finals.

The work of only the second female national coach began in September 2017 with two friendship games against Chile - France's 52nd international opponent - and Spain, whereby the Bleues were unable to play any competitive games in their own country until the World Cup. With a view to this World Cup, Diacre had to push ahead with the restructuring and rejuvenation of the national team, not only because Camille Abily and Élodie Thomis announced their resignation from the national team after the European Championship; Bouhaddi, Georges, Houara, Bussaglia and Thiney were also well over thirty in mid-2019. Some of them, according to Diacre, who has also completely changed the previous coaching staff, “are at the end of their careers”. Accordingly, she nominated eight players for her first line-up of 23 who had not yet played a single international match; five of them -  Torrent , Greboval , Sarr , Le Garrec and Cissoko  - actually made their debut, the first three even in the starting lineup. With this she set a "lonely record" in the history of national women, because none of her predecessors since 1997 had called more than two women with no experience in the A-Elf into his squad on his debut. Four weeks later she was testing four more newbies, and by the end of the year the number of debutantes had grown to eleven.

In addition, Diacre determined alternating Laura Georges, Amandine Henry and Eugénie Le Sommer instead of Wendie Renard as captain, and she let the team compete in the first meetings 4-3-3. The official goal of finishing in the last four at the World Cup was brought to a head by the coach almost a year and a half before the opening game, so that she also increased the pressure on herself.
A special feature was that Diacre called a noticeable number of players from "small" first division clubs in their roster in the early months. On the one hand, this served to find talent outside the dominant clubs from Lyon, Montpellier and Paris; on the other hand, this should strengthen women's football throughout the country and further develop the “we feeling” with a view to the 2019 World Cup.

By the end of the calendar year, there were further games against England, Sweden and Ghana (this was a first) and in Germany. In the world rankings , France temporarily slipped to sixth place with 2019 points, although it only had 14 points less than the third-placed English women. One of the reasons for this was the fact that the Bleues could only play less weighted friendly matches. At the beginning of March 2018, the SheBelieves Cup saw a firmer structure for the first time, when the coach against hosts USA (1: 1) and Germany (3: 0) put up an identical starting formation - with Torrent as the only newcomer, but also with Tounkara, Gauvin and the experienced Gaëtane Thiney, who was included for the first time at this tournament.

A month later, Wendie Renard was the 16th French woman to join the Hundreds Club against Nigeria .

After the Canada game at the beginning of April 2018, France did not play any further international matches, so that the players - according to Diacre - will have a slightly longer recovery period from June, which they will not have in summer 2019. Nevertheless, the Bleues climbed back to third place in the world rankings in June 2018.

In the autumn and winter of 2018/19, the team faced five non-European opponents; including Australia, Brazil and the USA, three women’s teams that are also in the FIFA Top 10. In France, the anticipation for the World Cup had risen sharply the closer it got to the start; the ticket offices of the Stade Océane in Le Havre remained closed against the Americans because its capacity of 22,870 spectators was already exhausted in advance sales . Games against Germany, Uruguay, Japan and Denmark followed. In the last week of May, the French World Cup line-up took on two Asian World Cup participants, namely Thailand - France's 55th opponent in its international history - and China, so to speak as the last tests for the "World Cup emergency" against South Korea. The performance at the World Cup tournament also decided whether France is one of the only three teams from the UEFA division that are allowed to take part in the 2020 Olympic football tournament in Tokyo. Once again, the French women who were eliminated in the quarter-finals failed to “convert the existing potential for variety into countable successes”. FFF President Le Graët then confirmed that Diacre will continue to be the Bleues head coach.

In October 2019, the qualification for the European Championship finals in England began , which was originally supposed to take place in the summer of 2021 and was then postponed by a year. In Group G, the Bleues will face Austria (23rd in the world rankings in the draw at the end of February 2019), Serbia (42nd), Kazakhstan (71st) and North Macedonia (121st) on a team against which the French had previously never played. Diacres first line-up after the World Cup included a selective rejuvenation by considering an absolute newcomer for the positions in goal, defense and midfield. At the same time, the trainer does not want to do without her most experienced powers (Bouhaddi, Thiney, Le Sommer, Henry) for the time being; From the age group of the 30-year-olds, she only no longer nominated Bussaglia.

The FFF hosted its own four-nation tournament ( Tournoi de France ) from March 4 to 10, 2020 . This is intended to perpetuate the enthusiasm for women's football, which had manifested itself in impressive spectator numbers at the 2019 World Cup. However, the event competed with concurrent tournaments in the United States, Portugal and Cyprus. In particular, the SheBelieves Cup restricted the selection of high-class opponents because the USA, England and Japan were contractually obliged to participate there. Brazil, Canada and the reigning European champions Netherlands took part in the first edition with games in Valenciennes ( Stade du Hainaut ) and Calais ( Stade de l'Épopée ). By winning the competition, the Bleues improved back to 3rd place in the world rankings.

Due to the global coronavirus pandemic , UEFA canceled all international match operations until summer 2020, so France's four European Championship qualifying matches scheduled for April and June had to be postponed. At the end of May, these four games were rescheduled for autumn

The European Championship finals have been postponed to July 2022. Some of the national players who were also unemployed in the club then took part in “home school lessons via the Internet” at Easter , each with a reference to football (Puissance Foot avec les Bleues) : Grace Geyoro with a video sequence in French grammar, Marion Torrent in geography, Viviane Asseyi in mathematics and Pauline Peyraud-Magnin in English.

Players

All players who have been included in France's women's senior national team since 1971 can be found in the list of French national football players .

Current squad

Starting line-up for the World Cup qualification against Austria (October 31, 2013): standing v. l .: Delannoy, Bussaglia, Renard, Delie, Henry, Thomis; crouching v. l .: Houara, Le Sommer, Bouhaddi, Nécib, Boulleau

This includes all players who were used at least once in the previous season and the current season or who were included in the World Cup squad, as well as all players who were appointed to the A-Eleven squad at least once by the national coach in the current season but were not used. Those players who announced their withdrawal from the bleues in the course of the preseason (2019/20) are missing here.

Surname	current club	Country games (goals) (a)0	birthday	2019/20 2020/21 inserted.	act. Listed bot (b)
Goalkeepers
Sarah Bouhaddi	Olympique Lyon	149 0(0)	10/17/1986	X	X
Solène Durand	EA Guingamp	001 0(0)	11/20/1994	X	X
Pauline Peyraud-Magnin	Arsenal WFC	004 0(0)	03/17/1992	X	X
Defenders
Estelle Cascarino	Girondins Bordeaux	001 0(0)	02/05/1997		X
Élisa De Almeida	Montpellier HSC	001 0(0)	01/11/1998	X
Sakina Karchaoui	Olympique Lyon	033 0(0)	01/26/1996	X	X
Griedge Mbock Bathy	Olympique Lyon	060 0(6)	02/26/1995	X	X
Pearl Morroni	Paris Saint-Germain FC	002 0(0)	10/15/1997	X	X
Eve Périsset	Girondins Bordeaux	019 0(0)	12/24/1994	X	X
Wendie Renard	Olympique Lyon	120 (24)	07/20/1990	X	X
Marion Torrent	Montpellier HSC	031 0(0)	04/17/1992	X	X
Aïssatou Tounkara	Atlético Madrid	016 0(0)	March 16, 1995	X	X
Midfielders
Charlotte Bilbault	Girondins Bordeaux	025 0(1)	06/05/1990	X	X
Kenza Dali	West Ham United	027 0(4)	07/31/1991	X	X
Onema Grace Geyoro	Paris Saint-Germain FC	031 0(2)	07/02/1997	X	X
Amandine Henry	Olympique Lyon	092 (13)	09/28/1989	X	X
Amel Majri	Olympique Lyon	057 0(8)	01/25/1993	X	X
Gaëtane Thiney	Paris FC	163 (58)	October 28, 1985	X
Attackers
Viviane Asseyi	Bayern Munich	042 0(7)	11/20/1993	X	X
Dolphins Cascarino	Olympique Lyon	024 0(5)	02/05/1997	X	X
Kadidiatou Diani	Paris Saint-Germain FC	056 (10)	04/01/1995	X	X
Valérie Gauvin	Everton LFC	031 (15)	06/01/1996	X	X
Marie-Antoinette Katoto	Paris Saint-Germain FC	009 0(3)	11/01/1998	X	X
Eugénie Le Sommer	Olympique Lyon	170 (80)	05/18/1989	X	X
Ouleymata Sarr	Girondins Bordeaux	012 0(3)	10/08/1995	X	X

^(a)A international matches (international goals in brackets); As of March 10, 2020

^(b) Line-up for three games at the Tournoi de France 2020

Ranking of missions and goalscorers

All in all

As of March 10, 2020; All players with at least 60 appearances or 10 hits are considered. Internationally active players are highlighted in bold. The order for players with the same number is done chronologically for the missions, for the hits according to the efficiency (goals per game).

Number of international matches
	Player	Duration from ... to ...	A country games
1	Sandrine Soubeyrand	1997-2013	198
2	Élise Bussaglia	2003-2019	192
3	Laura Georges	2001-2018	188
4th	Camille Abily	2001-2017	183
5	Eugénie Le Sommer	2009-2020	170
6th	Gaëtane Thiney	2007-2019	163
7th	Sonia Bompastor	2000-2012	156
8th	Sarah Bouhaddi	2004-2020	149
9	Louisa Nécib	2005-2016	145
10	Élodie Thomis	2005-2017	141
11	Marie-Laure Delie	2009-2017	123
12	Corinne Diacre	1993-2005	121
13	Wendie Renard	2011-2020	120
14th	Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé	1992-2005	115
15th	Marinette Pichon	1994-2006	112
16	Hoda Lattaf	1997-2007	111
17th	Sabrina Viguier	2000-2012	92
	Amandine Henry	2009-2020	92
19th	Peggy Provost	1998-2006	91
20th	Corine Franco	2003-2014	89
21st	Candie Herbert	1994-2010	83
22nd	Emmanuelle Sykora	1992-2004	82
23	Élodie Woock	1995-2004	78
24	Sandrine Roux	1983-2000	71
25th	Ophélie Meilleroux	2003-2013	67
26th	Laëtitia Tonazzi	2002-2014	66
27	Celine Deville	2002-2015	65
	Laure Boulleau	2005-2016	65
29	Jessica Houara	2008-2017	63
30th	Hélène Hillion-Guillemin	1988-1997	62
31	Griedge Mbock Bathy	2013-2020	60

Number of hits
	Player	Duration from ... to ...	Hit	input rates	Goals per game
1	Marinette Pichon	1994-2006	81	112	0.72
2	Eugénie Le Sommer	2009-2020	80	170	0.47
3	Marie-Laure Delie	2009-2017	65	123	0.53
4th	Gaëtane Thiney	2007-2019	58	163	0.36
5	Camille Abily	2001-2017	37	183	0.20
6th	Louisa Nécib	2005-2016	36	145	0.25
7th	Élodie Thomis	2005-2017	32	141	0.23
8th	Hoda Lattaf	1997-2007	31	111	0.28
9	Élise Bussaglia	2003-2019	30th	192	0.16
10	Wendie Renard	2011-2020	24	120	0.20
11	Sonia Bompastor	2000-2012	19th	156	0.12
12	Sandrine Soubeyrand	1997-2013	17th	198	0.09
13	Valérie Gauvin	2015-2020	15th	31	0.48
	Laëtitia Tonazzi	2002-2014	15th	66	0.23
15th	Isabelle Musset	1976-1990	14th	40	0.35
	Angélique Roujas	1995-2001	14th	51	0.27
	Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé	1992-2005	14th	115	0.12
	Corinne Diacre	1993-2005	14th	121	0.12
19th	Françoise Jézéquel	1988-2001	13	55	0.24
	Amandine Henry	2009-2020	13	92	0.14
21st	Candie Herbert	1994-2010	11	83	0.13
	Corine Franco	2003-2014	11	89	0.12
23	Kadidiatou Diani	2014-2020	10	56	0.18
	Emmanuelle Sykora	1992-2004	10	82	0.12

The goalkeeper with the most " caps " is Sarah Bouhaddi, after she overtook long-time record holder Sandrine Roux in September 2013. Corinne Diacre was the first French woman to make 100 international appearances in May 2003 . In the meantime, nine women, Sandrine Soubeyrand, Sonia Bompastor, Laura Georges, Camille Abily, Élise Bussaglia, Louisa Nécib, Eugénie Le Sommer, Gaëtane Thiney and Sarah Bouhaddi, have even left the French record international for men , Lilian Thuram (142 games), behind .

The first goalscorer in official international history was Jocelyne Ratignier , who won a hat-trick in a 4-0 win against the Netherlands in 1971 .

At the big tournament finals

World championships

In the four world championship tournaments with French participation (2003, 2011, 2015, 2019) Gaëtane Thiney and Eugénie Le Sommer (16 games each) were most frequently used in front of Laura Georges (14), followed by Wendie Renard, Élise Bussaglia (13 each) , Camille Abily (11), Sarah Bouhaddi, Amandine Henry, Louisa Nécib and Élodie Thomis (10 each), Marie-Laure Delie, Sandrine Soubeyrand (9 each), Sonia Bompastor (8), Amel Majri (7), Kadidiatou Diani and Laure Boulleau (6), Jessica Houara, Laure Lepailleur , Bérangère Sapowicz , Griedge Mbock Bathy, Valérie Gauvin and Delphine Cascarino (5 each). Five French women have taken part in three World Cup finals so far, namely Georges, Renard, Bussaglia, Le Sommer and Thiney.
The most successful French goal scorers here are Delie and Le Sommer (5 each), Renard (4), Thomis and Henry (3 each) ahead of Pichon, Thiney and Gauvin, who each scored 2 goals. Georges, Bompastor, Abily, Bussaglia and Nécib met once each.

European championships

The Bleues took part in the European Championship finals six times in a row from 1997 to 2017. The record holder for stakes at the continental level is Sandrine Soubeyrand, who has participated in five of these tournaments and was used in 17 games. They are followed by Camille Abily (14 missions), Sarah Bouhaddi, Laura Georges, Élodie Thomis and Eugénie Le Sommer (12 each), Élise Bussaglia (11), Sonia Bompastor, Gaëtane Thiney (10 each), Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé, Candie Herbert, Marinette Pichon, Louisa Nécib (9 each), Corinne Diacre (8) and Wendie Renard (7).

The most EM hits go to Pichon and Angélique Roujas (4 each), Abily, Nécib, Le Sommer (3 each), Mugneret-Béghé, Renard and Delie (2 each). Six other women were once successful.

Olympic games

In 2012 and 2016, the French women also played for Olympic medals. Sarah Bouhaddi, Wendie Renard, Camille Abily, Élise Bussaglia, Louisa Nécib and Élodie Thomis took part in all of the ten encounters. This is followed by Marie-Laure Delie (9), Eugénie Le Sommer (8), Sonia Bompastor, Corine Franco, Laura Georges, Sandrine Soubeyrand and Gaëtane Thiney with six missions each.

The scorers were Le Sommer (3), Georges Renard, Nécib, Delie, Thomis (2 each), Abily, Camille Catala , Thiney and Majri (1 each).

Venues and opponents

Unlike its men's counterpart, the women's national team did not have a permanent home stadium in the past few decades; rather, the women's home games were and will be played alternately throughout the country. Since the beginning of the 21st century in particular, and parallel to the growing success of the bleues, there has been a trend towards stadiums in large cities that have a higher capacity. There are only 20 French cities that have hosted more than two home games: Paris (8) - in three different stadiums -, Le Mans (6), Valence , Angers , Lyon , Rennes , Le Havre (5 each), Pauillac , Troyes , Besançon , Reims , Strasbourg , Calais , Valenciennes (4 each), Angoulême , Blois , Quimper , Montpellier , Marseille , Nice and Nîmes (3 each). The situation is similar with regard to the venues abroad. The most common venues there are those in which the French have taken part in friendship tournaments several times: Nicosia (10), Warna (8, at the beginning of the 1990s), Faro / Loulé (7, at the Algarve Cup ) and Larnaka (5, like Nicosia at the Cyprus Cup ).
With regard to home games, there have recently been signs of a cautious rethinking at the FFF. After the World Cup qualifying game against Bulgaria at the end of November 2013 attracted well over 13,000 interested people to the MMArena at Le Mans, this stadium was designated as the venue again just four months later (World Cup qualification against Austria), but only a good 8,000 visitors attended.
In January 2017, the French women competed on La Réunion for their fourth home meeting in one of the French overseas possessions ; they had previously played an official international match in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 2011 and in Guyane in 2014 .

In total, France's women have played 449 internationals so far, including the four controversial matches from 1971 as well as individual games that only the French association states as official; so the FFF names a game against the Italian B and the US U-21 selection. On the other hand, there were individual games, especially in the first two decades, that are only counted by the association of the respective opponents, for example in May 1972 in Basel against Switzerland (see the list of international matches for the French national women's football team ) . The French opponents came from 55 countries from all seven FIFA continental associations, with the Thai women being the last to join in May 2019 . The first non-European team was the USA in 1988 , followed by China , Japan and the Ivory Coast . Most often the Bleues met the Netherlands (29 times), the USA (27), Italy , England (25 each), Norway (21), Sweden (20), Switzerland and Germany (19 each), Denmark (18) , Scotland (16), Canada (15), Belgium (14), USSR / Russia , Spain (13 each), Finland (12), China, Iceland (11 each), Ireland , Poland and Brazil (10 each). (As of March 10, 2020)

The highest number of spectators at a game in France was recorded on August 6, 2012 at London's Wembley Stadium on the occasion of the semi-final against Japan in the women's Olympic tournament , which was attended by 61,482 spectators. In their own country, a new record was set in the World Cup quarter-finals against the USA on June 28, 2019, with 45,595 visitors in the Parc des Princes in Paris .

Public perception in France

Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet describes the reception of modern women's football in France and that of the national team until 2003 with the headline “Between curiosity and indifference”. For her, these almost four decades can be divided into three sections, which she characterizes as “object of curiosity”, “barely noticed drama” and “sport 'forgotten by the media”. In doing so, she points out the interdependence between the number of spectators in the stadiums and the extent of the reporting.

In stadiums and media

The 1972 international match against Switzerland was attended by 2,000 paying visitors, the one against the Netherlands in November 1975 by 1,200; Until the 1990s, the maximum number of spectators in a home game was 3,000 (May 1988 in Thonon-les-Bains against Czechoslovakia ), and the 2,000 mark was exceeded only once. In contrast, there were quite a few encounters with a mere three-digit number of spectators, such as around 600 visitors against Belgium in Reims (May 1976). The public interest only grew after the turn of the millennium, although numbers like the following remained the exception and were limited to a very few qualifying games for the major international tournaments: 6,787 (June 2000 in Nîmes ) against Sweden, 8,500 (April 2002 in Strasbourg ) against the Czech women and even 23,685 (November 2002 in Saint-Étienne with free entry) against England. Only after the successful performance at the 2011 World Cup did the French play again in front of a five-digit backdrop: 18,305 visitors in August 2011 against Poland in Lens - a region with a large number of residents of Polish origin - and around 10,000 each in October 2011 and February 2012 Israel in Troyes and the Netherlands in Nîmes. At the end of March 2012 against Scotland there were only a good 9,000 visitors, but four days later against Wales in Caen there were 16,700. The first friendly match after the again rather disappointing performance at the 2015 World Cup saw 22,053 spectators in Le Havre against Brazil, which was a record visit on French soil for a match with a ticket requirement, before even 24,835 payers for the European Championship qualifying match against Greece in June 2016 in Rennes attended. The FFF promotes direct audience support for the Bleues through moderate entrance fees; the most expensive place in Paris' Stade Charléty for the game against the Japanese world champions in July 2012, for example, only cost 20 euros. In general, the framework dates set by FIFA and UEFA for World and European Championship qualifying matches lead to a time collision with the match days of the national men's professional leagues, which also has an impact - but not only in France - on audience participation.

The national print media - with the exception of the PCF- affiliated sports newspapers Miroir Sprint and Miroir du Football  - were consistently neglected after a brief initial interest. For example, L'Équipe Magazine published a total of only 23 articles on players, their clubs and the bleues between February 1980 and August 2001 , while Onze Mondial published eleven from 1991 to 2001, almost half of them in the last year of this period. The women's national team first made the front page of L'Équipe, the country's top-selling sports newspaper, in November 2002 after they qualified for the World Cup by beating England (headline: “They did it”). Recently this has only changed in nuances; Since 2010 , L'Équipe and France Football have been printing the first division results along with the table and the team line-ups for international matches, but - with the exception of the four-week World Cup course in 2011, where France Football, for example, opened with "We love you" after the quarter-final victory  - hardly a further report or even a long game report. The same applies to the major French daily newspapers. Foot Mag , published by the FFF and distributed through magazine retailers , was published in April 2012 with its 41st edition for the first time exclusively on topics related to women's football. On the occasion of the opening of the Tournoi de France 2020 and in good time before International Women's Day , France Football also dedicated its entire edition to women's football.
Attempts to bring out an independent women's football magazine, are each failed after a few issues ( Le football au féminin 1983 Femme foot 1988 Football Féminin early 1990 and foot-féminin.fr, le Magazine 2001-2003). There were also several attempts on the Internet to create a purely women's football site, of which footofeminin.fr , which is now paid for, currently has the widest range on the topic of women's national team alongside the association website fff.fr. In the 2010s, footdelles.fr (actual name: Foot d'Elles ) was added.

It is not much different on the French book market. In 1981 two authors published a French title on women's football for the first time in a small publishing house. At the end of the 1980s, a handbook of training teaching was published specifically for women; It was not until 2003, after France's first World Cup participation, that a more sport-sociological, scientific study by Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet followed and the first overall presentation of French women's football by Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau (both titles see below under literature ). In the standard works on French football, on the other hand, there is little to be found on the bleues or the women's championships: Jean-Philippe Rethacker and Jacques Thibert ( La fabuleuse histoire du football , revised several times since 1984 and last updated in 2003) completely ignore women's football on over 1,000 pages, and Pierre Delaunay, Jacques de Ryswick and Jean Cornu ( 100 ans de football en France , published in 1982) dedicate three sentences to the subject on the female pioneers of the 1920s and two on the bleues of 1980, each with a photo. The historian Alfred Wahl ( Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880–1980) , from 1989) covers two pages with women's football in the interwar period, and Larousse du football of 1998 only gives a brief hint about it first European women's championship from 1982/1984. In 2011, even the FFF were among the 100 most important events in French football history, only three and a half women-related - and thus less than about male youth footballers - worth mentioning, namely the founding of the Bleues in 1970/71, their first participation in the World Cup in 2003, the fact that a woman overtook the French men's record international in 2009, and the 2010 “double European championship” of the male and female U-19s.

The same applies to the audiovisual media. In 1970 a televised synopsis of an unofficial match between French and Italian women was broadcast, but by the beginning of the 21st century "the broadcasters didn't take the risk of live broadcasting". Also significant is the episode when the national TF1 originally wanted to broadcast the last group match between France and Italy at the 2001 European Championship live; after the Bleues had no chance of advancing due to a defeat three days earlier, the station broadcast an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger instead of the football game . In 2005, Eurosport began broadcasting women's games in its two French-language programs, and Canal + , a pay-TV channel, also broadcast sporadic international matches. From 2009 Direct 8 owned the television rights, although the contract, which ran until 2014 , only required the free TV broadcaster to broadcast at least three matches per year. The live broadcast of August 25, 2010 during the World Cup qualifying match against Serbia reached 670,000 and a peak of 975,000 viewers. This mark was clearly exceeded in the 2011 World Cup quarter- finals with 3.2 million, and even the final of the Cyprus Cup on a Tuesday afternoon in March 2012 was watched by 368,000 spectators. At the 2015 World Cup - the main television rights holder was now W9  - the live broadcast of the decisive group game against Mexico reached an average of 2.2, at the top 2.7 million French, plus a maximum of 150,000 at Eurosport. In the further course of the tournament, this average increased to 2.8 million in the round of 16 (peak 3.8 million) and in the quarter-finals to 4.2 with a peak of even 5.3 million. Finally, at the 2017 European Championships, the number of viewers (various France Télévisions and Eurosport channels broadcast all matches live) more than doubled compared to 2013.
After all, qualification and friendly matches have recently been broadcast live mostly at prime time , so they are rarely scheduled in the afternoons. France's three matches at a top-class friendship tournament in the USA ( SheBelieves Cup in March 2016) were also broadcast live on D17 . TF1 has secured the broadcasting rights for the 2019 World Cup on the grounds that this acquisition of rights fits into the broadcasting strategy of offering viewers “the largest and most popular sporting events”. Group M6 has acquired the transmission rights for the period 2018 to 2023 .

With this recent upward trend in media perception, it cannot be overlooked that it began almost at the same time as the massive loss of reputation of the men's national team, which has long prevailed in the French public since their negative appearance at the World Cup in South Africa , at the latest since second place in the EM 2016 and the title win at the 2018 World Cup has given way to broad support again. Nevertheless, women are now considered to be “the epitome of the best values ​​in football such as the joy of playing and living, the enjoyment of exertion and simplicity, ... healthy and without deception”. The “Football Game of the Year” award, given by France Football since 1986, won a women's match for the first time in 2011 - the quarter-finals of the Bleues against England at the World Cup in Germany. This more positive attitude was also expressed in the print media in the immediate run-up to the 2019 World Cup in their own country: Special issues and extra supplements as well as article series on women's football were not only found in the specialist press (France Football, L'Équipe, So Foot, Sport Femmes) and in television program magazines, but also in numerous daily newspapers and magazines from Ouest-France to Paris Match .

Within the FFF

Gaëtane Thiney

Since the beginning of the 2010s, the FFF - and in particular the respective association president, who as the direct superior who has sole decision-making authority vis-à-vis the national coach in non-sporting matters - has been making increasing efforts to increase interest in women's football. In 2009, for example, she published a controversial poster on which four national players - undressed, but with discreetly concealed nakedness - asked the question: "Does it have to get this far before you want to see us play?" In 2010, the association also appointed Adriana Karembeu , a mannequin and wife of soccer player Christian Karembeu , as the “ambassador of women's soccer”, who also campaigned for more women and girls to play soccer in clubs. One of the first official acts of the newly elected association president Noël Le Graët in 2011 was to oblige all men's professional clubs to set up a women's team by 2014 at the latest - and a “substructure” in the youth sector - as Élisabeth Loisel had asked for ten years earlier . Le Graët's “Plan for Feminization”, which was initially set up for four years and has since been continued, was intended to bring about a far-reaching structural reform in state and regional associations as well as in the clubs. Indeed, these and other campaigns have resulted in a massive increase in the number of women with FFF eligibility since 2011, the number of which had increased from around 86,000 to 100,000 by January 2016 and has continued to grow strongly since then: In March 2019, there were almost 139,000 club players, 1,000 referees and 3,035 clubs - twice as many as in 2012 - that have at least one women's or girls' team. From the second half of 2019, the FFF intends to invest 15 million euros in promoting women's football, mainly in the amateur sector. In 2012, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, the association created the position of full-time representative for the implantation of girls' football at all French schools, the first incumbent of which is the national player Gaëtane Thiney . One of the more symbolic measures is the creation of a special logo for the women's A-Team (see above in the box) . The Bleues also have their own pool of seven team sponsors, who together paid 387,500 euros in 2012 - less than one percent of the sponsorship income of the men's national team. The FFF has recently been promoting women's internationals just as intensively as that of the men's team, and President Le Graët paid tribute to the importance of the football pioneers there at a friendly match for the national women in Reims at the end of June 2013:

"The French women's national team is going back to where it was born."

On the other hand, winning the 2011 world championship would have been worth a bonus of just 15,000 euros per player for the association; with the French men, however, 300,000 euros had been agreed a year earlier. When comparing with men's football, however, it should be taken into account that women in France still practice their sport under amateur conditions , even at a high level . The fact that only very few of the top players can make a living from it has so far not changed anything , even exceptions such as the “ women's football croissus ” Olympique Lyon; For example, the Juvisy FCF players received a prize of 150 euros in Division 1 Féminine in 2011/12 . In addition, some participants even see dangers in an increasing medialization and professionalization. Juvisy's former trainer Sandrine Mathivet, for example, feared a reduction in the female athletes' perception of their gender and the neglect of youth work; and the then 93-year-old Marcel Le Gal, who described himself as the “last dinosaur of women's football”, warned as early as 2003 against an alignment with negative phenomena in men's football:

"Earning money will also be in the foreground for women [...] and no longer the joy of playing. They will adopt masculine characteristics like 'crying' and simulating serious fouls, preventing opponents becomes more important than scoring your own hits. "

Measured by their share of the total number of members (around 3% in 2011), women are disproportionately represented in the key association committees, but they are still clearly in the minority: FFF General Secretary Brigitte Henriques, herself a 31-time national player under her maiden name Brigitte Olive , there are the only women on the 12-person Executive Committee and two out of 20 members of the Football High Authority. So this has not fundamentally changed since Marilou Duringer was elected to the Federal Council in 1985. Duringer stated in 2003 that until well into the 1990s there was an “absolute lack of interest in women's football topics” - “and we still have to persuade us all the time. We don't get the same attention as men. […] The fight goes on". When she formulated this, she could not yet have known that Corinne Diacre, the first French woman , would be signed as the head coach of a professional men's team (at second division Clermont Foot ) in 2014 .

At the beginning of 2019, Brigitte Henriques as Deputy President and Laura Georges as General Secretary are two women in the FFF's management.

literature

• Christiane Eisenberg / Pierre Lanfranchi / Tony Mason / Alfred Wahl : FIFA 1904–2004. 100 years of world football. The workshop, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89533-442-1 .
• Fédération Française de Football (Ed.): 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. Tana, o. O. 2011, ISBN 978-2-84567-701-2 .
• Claire Gaillard: La grande histoire des Bleues. In the coulisses de l'équipe de France féminine. Hachette, Paris 2019, ISBN 978-2-01-704705-6 .
• Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2003, ISBN 2-911698-25-8 (with prefaces by Claude Simonet and Aimé Jacquet )
• Audrey Keysers, Maguy Nestoret Ontanon: Football féminin. La femme est l'avenir du foot. Le bord de l'eau, Lormont 2012, ISBN 978-2-35687-185-5 .
• Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. L'Harmattan, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-7475-4730-2 .
• Olaf Wuttke: France, football, women. In: Zeitspiel (magazine for contemporary football history), issue 14, March 2019, ISSN 2365-3175, pp. 44–47.

Web links

Commons : France women's national soccer team  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official association website
• “Équipe de france féminine: Ce rêve bleu” , a historical summary from March 8, 2012 at chronofoot.com
• France on the FIFA homepage
• All international matches for France with lineups (up to 2004) at rsssf.com

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ In autumn 2017 (in a look back on a century of women's football in France ) the FFF kept silent about its own rejection of women's football at the time, merely speaking of the fact that there were " numerous reservations in the Hexagone " against it and that there was "bad press, especially from Pages of very puritan journalists ”.
2. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 27.
3. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, pp. 97 and 99f.
4. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 90ff .; Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 27.
5. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 155f.
6. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 18.
7. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 24; more contemporary quotes from Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 21.
8. ↑ On March 29, 2020, footofeminin.fr published a two-part review (of the 1960s and recognition by the FFF ) on this section of the “revitalization” of women's football in France .
9. ^ ^{A b} Fédération Française de Football: 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. 2011, p. 121.
10. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 217f .; similarly also Eisenberg / Lanfranchi / Mason / Wahl: FIFA 1904–2004. 2004, p. 188.
11. ^ Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001, ISBN 2-911698-21-5 , pp. 157f.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 235.
13. ↑ For the game of September 1970, see the data sheet for this encounter with the names of the French players involved at footofeminin.fr.
14. ^ Eisenberg, Lanfranchi / Mason / Wahl: FIFA 1904–2004. 2004, p. 187f.
15. ↑ Eduard Hoffmann, Jürgen Nendza: Laughed, Forbidden and Celebrated. On the history of women's football in Germany. Landpresse, Weilerswist 2005, ISBN 3-935221-52-5 , p. 46.
16. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 234f.
17. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 107; this photo was republished on the FFF website (second photo from above) in June 2013 .
18. ↑ Thibault Rabeux: Football féminin: Les Coupes du Monde officieuses. Le petit livre des grandes histoires. Self-published, oO 2019, ISBN 978-10-9590-642-2 , p. 10.
19. ↑ ^{a b} See the article “Women from the very beginning” of April 8, 2011 on the FIFA website (accessed on January 31, 2013).
20. ↑ Xavier Breuil: Histoire du football féminin en Europe. Nouveau Monde, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-84736-622-8 , p. 194.
21. ↑ for example in this list of games from 2003 on the association's website and in the book 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. 2011, pp. 120/121.
22. ↑ See the list of all women's international matches on the FFF website; These missions are also not taken into account in the individual data sheets for the women deployed against the Netherlands and Mexico.
23. ↑ On the situation in Germany at the time, compare in particular the interview with Hannelore Ratzeburg in Rainer Hennies / Daniel Meuren: Frauenfußball. The long road to recognition. Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89533-639-3 , pp. 65–69.
24. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, pp. 223/224.
25. ^ Eisenberg, Lanfranchi / Mason / Wahl: FIFA 1904–2004. 2004, pp. 190ff.
26. ↑ see also Cochés (so far still very sparse) data sheet on the website of the French football association
27. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 236.
28. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 219.
29. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, pp. 110 and 112ff.
30. ↑ Article “ Review: The path of the Euro qualification 1984 of the Bleues ” from January 5, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
31. ↑ ^{a b} Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 168.
32. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 117.
33. ↑ ^{a b} Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 220ff.
34. ↑ see Duringer's short biography ( memento of the original from December 22nd, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the side of the FFF 
35. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 129.
36. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 123f.
37. ↑ Marinette Pichon (and Fabien Lévêque): Ne jamais rien lâcher. First Éds., Paris 2018, ISBN 978-2-412-03101-8 , p. 114.
38. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 125.
39. ↑ Even in 2012, the association's website does not provide complete information on these women; Games of the U-21s are listed there only from the year 2000, those of the U-19 and U-17 even only from 2001. (Status: March 24, 2012)
40. ↑ see the respective Palmarès of the French U-17 or the U-19 on the association website
41. ↑ For the joint training camp in 2012 see, for example, the article from May 3, 2012 on the FFF website.
42. ↑ See the article "Équipe de france féminine: Ce rêve bleu" at chronofoot.com (under web links ); similar to Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 142.
43. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 282.
44. ↑ so Loisel in “Surf the wave” on July 14, 2011 at L'Équipe
45. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 135.
46. ↑ see the graphic representation of the ranking list development of the Bleues on the FIFA website
47. ↑ see the interview with Loisel from March 24, 2006 at fansoccer.de
48. ↑ Kicker Sportmagazin, special issue “WM 2011”, p. 46f .; Sven Simon: Women's World Cup Germany 2011. Copress, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7679-0968-7 , p. 30.
49. ↑ Sven Simon: Women's World Cup Germany 2011. Copress, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7679-0968-7 , p. 112.
50. ↑ Quote after this article  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Foot Hebdo on June 9, 2011.  
51. ^ "Women are more playful" in France Football of June 21, 2011, p. 8.
52. ^ Fédération Française de Football: 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. 2011, p. 202f.
53. ↑ L'Équipe: “France Football / FIFA Ballon d'Or”, special supplement of January 10, 2012, p. 30.
54. ↑ see the article “Euro: the end of the story for the blues” from July 23, 2013 at lemonde.fr
55. ↑ see the official announcement by association president Le Graët of July 30, 2013 on fff.fr
56. ↑ France Football, July 30, 2013, p. 47.
57. ↑ see the corresponding message from August 31, 2013 at footofeminin.fr
58. ↑ Interview with Bergeroo in France Football from September 24, 2013, p. 39.
59. ↑ see the final report of the Universiade from July 12, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
60. ↑ World ranking from December 19, 2014 at fifa.com
61. ↑ according to the statistical compilation " Brèves du Mondial - 30,000, 850,000 et 1.5 millions ... " from June 12, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
62. ↑ see the official announcement of July 1, 2015 at fff.fr
63. ↑ ^{a b} article “ The audience is ready for this new season ” from September 19, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
64. ↑ after the message " Dissolution for national coach Philippe Bergeroo on Thursday " from September 8, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
65. ↑ Article "Première de cordée", France Football of January 24, 2017, p. 29.
66. ↑ see the official notification of this replacement from September 9, 2016 at fff.fr
67. ^ " A tour through China canceled " from November 9, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
68. ↑ Article "Des Bleues en or" in France Football of January 4, 2017, p. 15.
69. ↑ So Echouafni in an interview with France Football (“Faisons preuve d'humilité”) on July 11, 2017, pp. 30/31.
70. ↑ Reports on the games against England and the USA at footofeminin.fr
71. ↑ Article “ Olivier Echouafni gets backing for his work from Noël Le Graët ” from August 1, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
72. ↑ see the article " Corinne Diacre nominated to lead the Bleues, Echouafni booted out " from August 31, 2017 on footofeminin.fr
73. ↑ Sébastien Duret recalls in the article “ Looking back at the quarter-finals: Attention, exits! "Of June 26, 2019 at footofeminin.fr to these setbacks and mentions that this" black series "has already cost three of Diacre's predecessors (Bini 2013, Bergeroo 2016, Echouafni 2017) the office.
74. ↑ Philippe Joly (from January 2020 Éric Blahic ) as assistant, Michel Ettorre as goalkeeper and Anthony Grech-Angelini as physics coach ; according to " A new staff on Corinne Diacre's side " from September 9, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
75. ↑ Quotation after the article “ Do everything so that the FFF wins a trophy ” from September 1st, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
76. ↑ according to the article “ The new faces of the Bleues ” from September 6, 2017 in Ni buts ni soumises
77. ↑ Interview “I know where I'm going” in France Football from January 16, 2018, p. 38 f.
78. ↑ So Cécile Locatelli , coach of the B-girls national team, in a statement to France Football, issue of April 3, 2018, p. 4.
79. ↑ see the thorough analysis of the first six games under Diacre from December 5, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
80. ↑ Article “ We have a very solid foundation ” from April 10, 2018 at footofeminin.fr
81. ↑ Article " France - United States with closed counters " from January 17, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
82. ↑ This is how Charlotte Vincelot put it in her assessment of the World Cup favorites from May 1, 2019 at footofeminin.fr.
83. ↑ " Corinne Diacre confirmed in office " of June 30, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
84. ↑ Dates of the European Championship qualifiers at footofeminin.fr
85. ↑ " Tournoi de France - Brazil, Canada and the Netherlands next March " from November 28, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
86. ↑ Article “ Cancellation of the games in June ” from April 1, 2020 at footofeminin.fr
87. ↑ see the teaching topic overview from April 14, 2020 at fondactiondufootball.com
88. ↑ Sarah Bouhaddi stated in July 2020 that she “ wanted to take a break in the national team for the time being” because “the scar of failure at the 2019 World Cup has not yet healed” ; but this is not a final withdrawal - see the article " Sarah Bouhaddi announces a break with the national team " from July 29, 2020 at footofeminin.fr.
89. ↑ see the list on the FFF website
90. ↑ ^{a b} According to Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 261, Sykora made his debut against the women from the CIS on April 17, 1992 and thus played one more game and scored one more goal than is mentioned in the association statistics, in which she only made 81 appearances with nine goals comes.
91. ↑ 15 hits according to your data sheet at footofeminin.fr
92. ↑ see for example "Bompastor does it better than Thuram" at football-mag.fr
93. ^ Gaillard: La grande histoire des Bleues. 2019, p. 19 f.
94. ↑ This was the Parc des Princes in 1973 and twice in 2019 , the Stade Charléty four times in 2012 and 2016 and the Stade Jean-Bouin in 2015 .
95. ↑ see the articles “The MMArena, a stadium for the important games?” From November 28, 2013 and “France - Austria in the MMArena” from September 19 at footofeminin.fr
96. ↑ Article Fourth match overseas since 2011 from January 19, 2017 on fff.fr
97. ↑ This information comes from the article " A success against China before the World Cup " from May 31, 2019 on the FFF website. Depending on the source used, however, there is also information that fewer official games were played - this depends on the question already addressed at the beginning, which matches are counted as official in the respective source.
98. ↑ see the message on the FFF website
99. ↑ according to the game data sheet from June 28, 2019 at fff.fr
100. ↑ so the corresponding headings of chapter 5 in Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003.
101. ↑ This is also not a specifically French, but a global phenomenon; see. Eisenberg, Lanfranchi / Mason / Election: FIFA 1904–2004. 2004, p. 193f. And in Germany, ARD did not even broadcast the 1989 European Championship final, even though the tournament took place in their own country and the German women became champions - cf. Eduard Hoffmann, Jürgen Nendza: Laughed, banned and celebrated. On the history of women's football in Germany. Landpresse, Weilerswist 2005, ISBN 3-935221-52-5 , p. 60.
102. ↑ all audience figures according to Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, pp. 253f.
103. ↑ These numbers according to the respective game data sheet on the FFF website.
104. ↑ according to the FFF information on the Scotland and Wales game
105. ↑ Number of spectators according to the match report from June 3, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
106. ↑ List of admission prices on the FFF website
107. ↑ Xavier Breuil: Histoire du football féminin en Europe. Nouveau Monde, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-84736-622-8 , pp. 182ff.
108. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 257.
109. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 215.
110. ↑ France Football of July 12, 2011, p. 1.
111. ↑ After all, the Bleues took up slightly more space in it after the 2011 World Cup, for example in a large Bini interview on October 26, 2011 in Le Monde .
112. ↑ see the announcement "Foot Mag 100% féminin!" ( Memento of the original from July 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Foot Hebdo on April 5, 2012. 
113. ↑ France Football, March 3, 2020 edition , at francefootball.fr
114. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 258.
115. ^ Jacques Novak and Bernard Virion: Le football féminin . Ed. Chiron Sport, o. O. 1981, ISBN 2-7027-0296-1 .
116. ^ Jean-Philippe Rethacker, Jacques Thibert: La fabuleuse histoire du football. Minerva, Genève 1996, 2003², ISBN 978-2-8307-0661-1 .
117. ^ Pierre Delaunay, Jacques de Ryswick / Jean Cornu: 100 ans de football en France. 2nd Edition. Atlas, Paris 1983, ISBN 2-7312-0108-8 , pp. 82 and 297
118. ^ Alfred Wahl: Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880-1980). Gallimard, op . Cit. 1989, ISBN 2-07-071603-1 , pp. 195-197.
119. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 14.
120. ^ Fédération Française de Football: 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. 2011, pp. 120f., 178f., 198f. and 202f.
121. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, pp. 255f .; A short film from the INA archive can be found at footofeminin.fr about the complete lack of mediatization of French women's football in the 1970s and 1980s (“ INA Archive - Les femmes et le foot, quelle idée! ” from January 24, 2017).
122. ↑ ^{a b} Article “ TF1 acquires the TV rights to the 2019 World Cup ” from January 15, 2016 at footofeminin.fr
123. ↑ see “Eurosport loves girls” on March 10, 2012 in Le Parisien
124. ↑ Article about the contract with Direct 8 at Footofeminin
125. ↑ France Football, September 7, 2010, p. 32.
126. ↑ see this article from July 12, 2011 on the association's website
127. ↑ France Football of March 13, 2012, p. 51.
128. ↑ Figures based on " Bleues-Kantersieg also on the television receivers " on the 18th, " Record with 2.79 million for France - South Korea on W9 " on the 22nd and " 4.1 million viewers for Germany - France and a peak of 5, 3 million ”from June 27, 2015, each at footofeminin.fr
129. ↑ Article “ The Bleues' audience numbers have more than doubled in four years ” from August 1, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
130. ↑ according to the report of January 12, 2016 at fff.fr
131. ↑ Article " TV: The Bleues at M6, the D1 one hundred percent in Canal + programs " from November 14, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
132. ^ Results of a representative survey by TNS Sofres in France Football of February 1, 2011, p. 10; The article “Les Bleues dans la course au Mondial” from June 2011 in the women's magazine Marie Claire also emphasizes this connection.
133. ↑ Article “Nos Bleues offrent un football tourné vers l'offensive, sain et sans tricherie”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from February 14, 2012 at chronofoot.com. The long-time editorial director of France Football, Jacques Ferran, put it similarly, describing women's football as an “opportunity for men to rediscover football - inspired, lively, creative” (France Football, June 5, 2012, p. 59).  
134. ^ France Football of December 13, 2011, pp. 29 and 42/43
135. ↑ “ When the printed press dedicates its front page to the World Cup ” from June 5, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
136. ↑ see the allocation of competencies in the organizational chart of the FFF Presidium from October 25, 2011.
137. ↑ France Football, September 7, 2010, p. 33.
138. ↑ see this poster of the FFF ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Adriana Karembeu with the number 6) 
139. ↑ See the message “Le Graët wants to strengthen women's football” from July 14, 2011 at L'Équipe ; France Football, July 19, 2011, p. 39.
140. ↑ see the main points of this plan in the article “Le plan de féminisation de la FFF” of March 11, 2012 on the FFF website
141. ↑ according to FFF General Secretary Brigitte Henriques in her foreword to Marinette Pichon: Ne jamais rien lâcher. First Éds., Paris 2018, ISBN 978-2-412-03101-8 , p. 18.
142. ↑ " The numbers of women's football " from March 7, 2019 on the association's website
143. ↑ Article “New goal for Gaëtane Thiney” from January 31, 2012 on the FFF website
144. ↑ see the list of their official partners on the association's website
145. ↑ France Football of July 24, 2012, pp. 20f.
146. ↑ see for example “Support the Bleues in Le Havre!” On the association's website for a game against Scotland at the end of March 2012.
147. ↑ see the article from June 25, 2013 on the FFF page
148. ↑ see the article "How much do the Bleues earn ?" From July 12, 2011 at staragora.com (with reference to Le Parisien)
149. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. 2003, p. 282ff.
150. ↑ France Football of April 3, 2012, p. 43.
151. ↑ see the interview “Women's football has been muddling through alone for 30 years” on June 22, 2011 in Le Monde
152. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. 2003, p. 49 (quotation) and 45f. (to person); From the mid-1960s onwards, Le Gal was one of the first coaches of a French women's team in Sézanne and, together with Pierre Geoffroy, headed the Ligue de Nord-Est regional women's football committee, which was set up in 1969 - before the FFF was recognized nationwide .
153. ↑ See the election results for both bodies  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated June 18, 2011 at Foot Hebdo; Duringer was elected as the second woman next to Élodie Crocq in the High Authority - there is a quota for women according to Article 23 of the association statutes  - (see the article “The gendarmes from Soufflenheim defend their title”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: Der Link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. From March 19, 2012 on the Ligue d'Alsace website ).    

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on June 3, 2012 in this version .