Nelly Viennot

Nelly Viennot (born January 8, 1962 in Flers ) is a former French football referee and player . According to the European federation , she was the first woman to be used as a referee and line judge, both in France and at international level, for games by men's teams.

Career as an active athlete

Player

Nelly Viennot, who is only 1.52 m tall, was very active in sports even as a teenager - in hand and soccer . Since the late 1970s , she has guarded the goal in the first women's football team of FCF Condé-sur-Noireau . With this she reached the quarter-finals of the French championship several times, for the first time in the 1983/84 season .

Referee and linesman

In 1987 she came to referee out of an emergency situation (“so the club could avoid a penalty”) than out of conviction; In this new function, however, she developed into a celebrity of her guild not only in France.

In women's football

In women's football, the national association FFF Nelly Viennot started early in the French first division . Exact numbers of games or even just the period of time during which she was entrusted with game management in the league founded in 1992 as Championnat National 1 A are not given in the sources used; however, even in 2015, statistical data for their first few years are not yet fully recorded. From the mid-1990s, Viennot was also active internationally; One of the highlights at this level was her inclusion as line judge at two Olympic soccer tournaments ( 1996 in Atlanta and 2004 in Athens ), where she was involved in four games each, including the respective final: 1996 (the women from the United States defeated China ) the French assisted the Norwegian Bente Skogvang , in 2004 (again the USA won the gold medal, this time against Brazil ) the Swede Jenny Palmqvist . At the 2003 Women's World Cup , to which the French national team also qualified for the first time , Viennot was also on the sidelines in three games.

In men's football

As a referee, she has led matches herself up to the French third division , where she only sent off a Paris FC player once . However, she was much more successful in men's football as assistant referee in the team of Éric Poulat , with whom she worked for eight years.

From 1996 until reaching the age limit in 2007, Nelly Viennot also acted on the sidelines in almost 200 point games in the top men's division . There were also two appearances in finals for the Coupe de France ( 2002 and 2007 ). Since the end of the 1990s, she has worked in the same role in the Champions and Europa League as well as international matches .

In a local derby between Racing Strasbourg and FC Metz at the end of 2000, a banger thrown onto the field from the stands of the Stade de la Meinau exploded next to her left ear, on which she has since suffered a 25% hearing loss . After Nelly Viennot was involved in the U-21 European Championship in 2004 , she was the first woman in the world to be included in the 82 pre-selection for the game management at the World Cup in Germany . However, she failed in the last sprint test in which she is said to have missed the required time by two tenths of a second.

Honors

In 2006, Nelly Viennot was awarded the National Order of Merit (Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite ) by President Jacques Chirac . The following year, the French professional footballers union UNFP awarded her a special “Trophées UNFP” for her overall performance. In 2013, a medal of honor was added by the French Post Office , which sponsors refereeing within the FFF.

Functionary

After her active time, she became a member of the FFF (Commission féminine de l'arbitrage) . She has lived near Nancy since 2012 ; The mother of two is also active there in refereeing, now for the Lorraine regional association of the FFF.

Web links

• Detailed interview about her career on December 27, 2012 at Le Point
• Mission statistics as umpire assistant (national and international) on weltfussball.de

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ see the article “ Viennot waltzes to another first ” from August 2, 2002 on uefa.com
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} see the article “ La touche finale ” from May 26, 2007 in Le Parisien
3. ↑ for example France-Soir in an article about women in football from January 26, 2012
4. ↑ see the article " The World of Women Referees " from October 16, 1996 and the game data sheet of the final between the US and Chinese women , both at fifa.com
5. ↑ according to the game data sheet for the final between Brazil and the USA at fifa.com
6. ↑ see FIFA's technical report on this tournament, in the PDF for example on p. 23
7. ↑ ^{a b} see the interview with Éric Poulat  ( 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 7 December 2011 on fc-vesle.com (there on p. 5 of the PDF)  
8. ↑ see the short biography broadcast by ina.fr in 1996 on the occasion of their first league appearance on France 3
9. ↑ see the international mission profile at soccerpunter.com
10. ↑ Article “ History Beckons Nelly Viennot ” from April 13, 2006 on the page of the Indian newspaper The Telegraph
11. ↑ ^{a b c} see the article " A little less right to error than a man " from December 19, 2012 in Le Républicain Lorrain
12. ↑ see the list of awards for the 2006/07 season ( memento of the original from August 4, 2009 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 unfp.org 
13. ↑ see the message on laposte.fr