Gaëlle Blouin

Gaëlle Blouin (born August 14, 1972 in Nantes ) is a former French football player . She is currently working as a coach in women's football .

Club career

Gaëlle Blouin first played as a teenager at OC Saint-Herblain , whose women's eleven played a good role in the mid-west of France in the 1980s, still under the name AS Gagnerie , without ever succeeding nationwide. It was there that she was appointed to the French national team for the first time (see below) . Whether Blouin temporarily stopped playing club soccer in 1991 - possibly in connection with her school leaving certificate - cannot be determined from the sources used. In any case, from summer 1992 she was part of the women's team of Toulouse Olympique Mirail , which belonged to the national first division , the Championnat National 1 A , which was just experiencing its debut season . Only six months later, the midfielder moved back to her region of origin and played for the then second division ESOF La Roche . After a year and a half she left the Vendée and from then on wore the dress of the Toulouse Olympique Aérospatial Club .

The TOAC was promoted to the top division at this point and finished Blouins first season there as runner-up. In the following seasons, too, Toulouse was never worse than third in the final table. During this time, a women's team grew up there, formed around players like Anne Zenoni , the sisters Marie-Ange and Marie-Joëlle Kramo , Élodie Woock , Céline Marty and Gaëlle Blouin, and which was later formed by Sabrina Viguier and Lilas Traïkia further strengthened. In 1999 the TOAC won the national championship title for the first time, which it defended in the following two years. In 2001, the women's football department switched to financially stronger local rivals Toulouse FC , and under the new club colors Blouin not only won their fourth championship in a row, but also prevailed together with her comrades in the 2001/02 cup competition for the Challenge de France , which was held for the first time ; This made the TFC the first doublé winner in France's women's football history.

In this "successful season", Toulouse's women also advanced to the semi-finals in the European Cup , where they met 1. FFC Frankfurt . In the first leg in front of their own audience, in which the "Téfécé" lost 2-1, Blouin was absent due to a suspension that her yellow-red card had caused in the quarter-final victory over the Arsenal Ladies . In the second leg against the Germans, TFC coach Jean-Pierre Bonnet was able to use them again; But even she did not succeed in preventing the goalless draw from putting an end to further hopes of the French women.

At the end of the following 2002/03 season, Toulouse FC was again at the top of the table in Division 1 , but collapsed in the subsequent championship round of the four best teams in terms of performance and ended the season only in fourth place. Then, shortly before her 31st birthday, Gaëlle Blouin ended her career at the highest level.

Stations

• AS Gagnerie / OC Saint-Herblain (until 1991)
• Toulouse Olympique Mirail (June to December 1992)
• ESOF La Roche (January 1993-June 1994)
• Toulouse OAC (1994-2001)
• Toulouse FC (2001-2003)

In the national team

Gaëlle Blouin was only 18 years old when then national coach Aimé Mignot helped her to her first international match, which was lost 4-0 to the USA . The debutante stood on the pitch for the entire duration of the game - at that time it was 80 minutes. It then took almost eight years before she was used again in the blue national dress under Mignot's successor Élisabeth Loisel . From this point in time (February 1999), however, Blouin was an indispensable regular player and by June 2002 had a total of 41 international A matches, in which she also scored four goals for France . If necessary, she was also repeatedly used in the defense line.

She was not only an undisputed part of the French squad at the 2001 European Championship finals , but also played all three preliminary round matches of the Bleues at the tournament in Germany , where she was substituted against Norway , but was in the starting eleven in the two subsequent matches. In the second game against the Danes , which was already decisive for progress , Gaëlle Blouin scored 3: 3 shortly before the end of the game with a shot from 20 meters away, but Denmark turned the result in the remaining minutes, so that France's women despite the subsequent victory Eliminated early via Italy .
She was also involved in all six group games in France's first successful qualification for a World Cup finals (2003). In the following relegation games against Denmark and England, however, she was missing as well as in the final French World Cup squad .

Blouin also played against opponents from German-speaking countries, namely in 1999 against Austria - in this encounter she shot her French women 2-1 ahead -, Germany and Switzerland ; against the latter, she stood on the lawn again in 2001.

Life after the time as a player

After finishing her active career, Gaëlle Blouin remained connected to women's football and the south-west of France and trained as a coach. In this new role - no longer on, but next to the field - she is responsible for the C-youth selection of the Midi-Pyrénées as an employee of the regional subdivision of the regional association FFF there. In spring 2010 she led these girls in the national cup competition of the corresponding age group (now known as U-15) in the France-wide finals tournament. She is now married and has the surname Blouin-Dumas.

She received a special kind of honor in 2014 when France's record national player Sandrine Soubeyrand named her in her personal selection of the best French players of all time (équipe type) in the defensive midfield position.

Palmarès

• French champion: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 (and runner-up 1995, 1997)
• French cup winner: 2002
• 41 senior internationals, 4 goals for France

Web links

• Blouins data sheet on the website of the French Football Association
• Datasheet at footofeminin.fr

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ This year 1991/92 without a club is indicated on the association's website, while footofeminin.fr does not give any information about this season, but Blouin already assigned ESOF La Roche in the preseason, where, according to the FFF, she only played in 1993 (see the two data sheets under web links ).
2. ^ Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2003, ISBN 2-911698-25-8 , pp. 97 and 100
3. ↑ see the game data sheet for the match against the Frankfurt women at footofeminin.fr
4. ↑ see the game data sheet at footofeminin.fr
5. ^ Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2003, ISBN 2-911698-25-8 , pp. 152f.
6. ↑ see overview  ( 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 fifa.com  
7. ↑ see the article "Les filles de Gaëlle Blouin qualifiées!" At foot31.fr
8. ↑ see the article “Un label national pour l'école de football féminin” of December 22, 2012 from La Dépêche du Midi
9. ↑ see the interview with Soubeyrand from February 18, 2014 at Foot d'Elles