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    Can This Man Fix France’s Women’s Team?

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    Hervé Renard has led two men’s teams to the World Cup. But in taking over his country’s talented but troubled women’s squad, he may have his toughest job yet.The banner hangs just beneath the central staircase of the elegant hotel that has been taken over by the France women’s national team for the World Cup. Hervé Renard wanted to make sure no one in his squad could miss it.The motivational words emblazoned across it are typical of the type of positive messaging teams rally around before major sporting tournaments. But for this French squad, and for Renard, its well-traveled coach, the words carry extra significance after a period many on the team would prefer to forget.“Only team spirit,” it reads, “can make you realize your dreams.”Renard used the phrase the first time he met the French squad earlier this year, only months before the World Cup. That was not long after he was chosen to replace the fired coach Corinne Diacre, but even then he knew it was a message that might resonate with a team that even its own federation had concluded was “fractured” beyond repair.“We were missing unity,” Renard said in an interview on a sunny terrace in front of the team’s base camp last week. It was perhaps the biggest understatement in women’s soccer.France has arrived in Australia this month as a World Cup favorite on the mend. Torn apart by bitter feuds, it has in recent months lost players, welcomed them back, and then lost them again. It has changed coaches, changed approaches and changed tactics. And now it has asked Renard, a respected 54-year-old with a decorated men’s World Cup résumé but no previous experience coaching women, to carry it at least as far as the semifinals.He started the process, he said, by being open about what he did not know.“For me everything was new because I did it know women’s football, how to manage the girls,” he said. “I was lucky because on our staff a lot of people were already working with women’s football. So I was listening.”What he inherited was a talented team in disarray. Its longtime leader, Wendie Renard (who is not related to Hervé), had announced that she would not play in the World Cup to preserve her mental health. Two other stars had followed suit, saying they would not return unless there was a change in leadership of the team.France’s longtime captain, Wendie Renard, had said she would skip the World Cup rather than play for the team’s former coach. William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere had been previous controversies under Diacre, the coach at the time, but nothing quite so serious or existential. A mutinous mood had turned into an open rebellion.Faced with a crisis as the World Cup loomed, the French soccer federation acted, announcing after a brief investigation that Diacre had to go. The rupture between her and the team, the federation said, had become so significant that it “has reached a point of no return.”Hervé Renard, enjoying a successful and lucrative stop on an itinerant coaching career in Saudi Arabia, said he acted on impulse as the news broke. He contacted Jean-Michel Aulas, one of the most influential men in French soccer and a member of the French federation’s board. Renard met him a decade ago, when he narrowly missed out on becoming the coach of Lyon’s men’s team. He told Aulas that he wanted to be considered for the opening.It promised a significant change of course for his career. Renard said that until the moment he picked up his phone to message Aulas, he had only once before considered coaching women: a flight of fancy that came as he watched France play in the last World Cup. His interest then, he said, had lasted “maybe just for a few seconds.”But now that his interest in coaching a women’s team for the first time was reciprocated, he faced a problem. To accept the job, he would need the permission of soccer officials in Saudi Arabia, where he was under contract, and he would need to accept a significant pay cut. The Saudi job, Renard explained with a smile, paid at least “20 times” what he would earn coaching France’s women.“When you are in Saudi Arabia it’s not exactly the reality,” he said. “So sometimes it’s good to go to reality.”Months later, Renard said he still cannot quite explain why he tossed his hat in the ring, before looking down at the French crest on the left breast of his tracksuit. Having coached five other national teams, he said, the chance to lead the country of his birth was clearly a major draw. But even then, some things, Renard said, cannot be explained. “I still don’t know why exactly I decided,” he said.Renard’s most recent World Cup experience came as the coach of Saudi Arabia, which was the only team to beat Argentina, the eventual champion, at the 2022 championship in Qatar.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesRenard is sanguine about his rare feat of coaching in two World Cups within a year. “The most important thing is not to participate in two World Cups in six months,” he said. “It’s to do something” in them.Of all the teams Renard has coached, his current squad is the highest ranked, at fifth in the world — a lofty profile it has maintained despite never making it beyond the semifinals of a major tournament. Renard said that is now possible.“We have to believe in ourselves,” he said.He is under orders to reach the semifinals, he said, a target he has accepted. “We can’t come here when you are fifth in the world and say, ‘Oh, no, a quarterfinal will be enough.’ No. We need to have a very a high challenge. So our first target is to reach the semifinals. Then afterward we will talk about other things.”Renard has had only months to mend a fractured squad, to inculcate the team spirit that his banner demands and that he believes his players need to win in what he considers the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history.In his first training camp, Renard told the team he was not interested in what happened in the past. He did not want to litigate past games, past feuds, past grievances — all the things that had made the atmosphere in the camp so poisonous that stars like Wendie Renard said they would rather not play for France at all. But he could not avoid confronting one final pretournament controversy.Kheira Hamraoui, an experienced and gifted midfielder and a regular on the national team, was attacked in 2021 by masked men following a dinner with her club, Paris Saint-Germain. The fallout had reverberations for both the club and the national team, with a former teammate on both teams, Aminata Diallo, charged with involvement in the attack, and others angered by Hamraoui’s initial claims that they or people they knew were also involved.The bizarre episode shadowed the national team for more than two years. Faced with reviving it in the France camp, Renard said he decided against bringing Hamraoui to the World Cup, and told her in a face-to-face meeting why she would not be selected.He said he told Hamraoui that she was not going to start, and that a place on the bench would be unsettling for a player of her experience. “I think for this kind of player, you start in the first 11 or it is very difficult to sit on the bench,” he said. “We can’t go forward in a competition if we don’t have a fantastic team spirit.”Renard acknowledged that not every choice he makes will be the correct one. But he said he has been frank with his players about what he knew, and what he did not.“I said to the girls: ‘Maybe I will make some mistakes. If I say something wrong, just let me know.’ But step by step, you learn how to manage,” he said.His players, for the moment, say they are hearing the right things. “He keeps pushing us to be the best versions of ourselves,” midfielder Grace Geyoro said in a recent interview. Said Wendie Renard: “As long as everyone has the same vision and a willingness to pull in the same direction, then we can achieve something great.”France’s women’s team practicing in Sydney on Saturday.Carl Recine/ReutersThe World Cup takes place with the sharpest focus on women’s soccer in the sport’s history, and with teams and players using the platform to push for greater recognition and compensation for their efforts. FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has more than tripled prize money from four years ago, to $110 million. Its critics have said that new figure does not go far enough, that it should be the same as the $440 million prize pool awarded to men at the 2022 World Cup in 2022.Hervé Renard acknowledged the progress women’s soccer has made, particularly since the last World Cup. But, perhaps controversially, he said that “women still have to be a little bit patient” when it comes to pay.As interest continues to grow, he said, so will the earning potential. But commercial reality, he said, was reflected in the sports’ differing revenues, and he put forward an analogy to make his point.“If you have one restaurant with 1,000 meals in the evening and one with 300, it’s not the same,” he said. “At the end of the night in the register, it’s not the same amount. Football it’s the same. It’s business.” More

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      Hervé Renard Set to Coach France at Women’s World Cup

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      Renard has vast experience in Africa and led Saudi Arabia at last year’s World Cup. But he has never coached a women’s team.PARIS — Hervé Renard, a French coach with vast experience in international soccer but none leading a women’s team, was set to be hired to lead a France squad that will be among the favorites at the Women’s World Cup in July.France is expected to announce Renard’s hiring by the end of the week, just over two weeks after the country’s soccer federation fired its longtime women’s coach, Corinne Diacre, in the face of player revolt.Renard, 54, most recently coached Saudi Arabia’s men’s team but announced his departure on Tuesday, hours after the Saudi soccer federation said it had agreed to a French federation request to end his contract immediately.The French soccer federation made no announcement that it had hired Renard, but the Saudi federation’s president, Yasser Al-Misehal, essentially confirmed a deal was in the works when he told a Saudi sports channel on Tuesday night that Renard had been offered the France post and that the coach “expressed his desire to take this opportunity.”Renard’s arrival could be a welcome breath of fresh air for Les Bleues, as the French women’s team is known, but also for the embattled French federation, which will be eager for a fresh start after a leadership change as well as a series of internal conflicts that were threatening to tear apart its star-studded and trophy-chasing women’s team.Time is short: France’s players will have only a matter of months, and a handful of exhibition games, to adapt to Renard before they run out for their Women’s World Cup opener against Jamaica on July 23 in Sydney, Australia.But Renard also will have only a short window to persuade his players that he can adapt his style to them, and to the women’s game. While he has decades of coaching experience in multiple countries, he has not previously coached women at the professional or international level. At least one prominent player agent said that would not be a problem.“As someone who’s known for leading men, I’m sure he’ll have no problem leading women,” Sonia Souid, an agent who represents several players on the French women’s team, said in an interview last week. Souid suggested that Renard’s transition could be seamless as long as he can make the players believe they can succeed.“The real challenge is that Renard will be expected to have immediate results,” she said. “That’s difficult for any coach.”Renard’s most immediate task will be to heal the wounds of a “fractured” group, as the federation called its women’s team in the communiqué that announced Diacre’s departure. Fissures between Diacre and some of her best players broke for good in February, when several top players, including the team captain Wendie Renard and the Paris-St.-Germain star Marie-Antoinette Katoto, announced that they would leave the team and refuse future calls to international duty amid disagreements with the management of Diacre, which they denounced as “nowhere near top-level requirements.”Wendie Renard announced on social media that she had chosen to prioritize her “mental health” by quitting the French team. Two weeks later, Diacre was fired.Hervé Renard has a reputation as an itinerant leader who extracts results from his players and then moves on. He has never stayed more than four years on the same coaching bench in a career that has taken him to Africa, the Middle East, England’s fourth division, France’s Ligue 1 and to local teams in the Algerian and Vietnamese championships.Sharp-jawed and favoring crisp white dress shirts on the sideline, Renard attracted attention and headlines during last year’s World Cup in Qatar, where he led an unheralded Saudi Arabia team stocked with domestic-based players to a stunning group-stage victory over Argentina.A video of an impassioned speech he delivered to his players at halftime of that game racked up millions of views on social media, but also offered a glimpse into both his methods, his passion and his no-nonsense coaching style.His first look at his new team could come within days: France will gather for a training camp next week ahead of a set of friendly matches against Colombia and Canada in early April.As he prepares for the World Cup, Renard will have to work quickly to merge a new generation of talents like Katoto with an older group of players whose international careers came to an abrupt end under Diacre. That latter group includes not only Renard and goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi but also midfielder Amandine Henry, who remains a mainstay of the French powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais Féminin at the age of 33. Henry has not played for France in more than two years, and was left off the national team’s roster by Diacre for last summer’s European Championship in England.That tournament, like so many others, ended in disappointment and frustration for France. Despite its talent, it has never reached the final of a major championship like the World Cup or the Euros or claimed an Olympic medal in its 50 years of existence.Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

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      France Fires Corinne Diacre as Coach Only Months Before World Cup

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      Several top players had refused to play for Corinne Diacre, and the divide between the coach and her team “has reached a point of no return,” the federation decided.Corinne Diacre, a veteran coach facing a revolt by several of her best players only months before the Women’s World Cup, was fired Thursday as coach of France’s women’s soccer team. The move upended the preparations of one of the world’s best teams four months before women’s soccer’s showcase championship, but it could open a path for the return of several French stars who had said they would skip the tournament rather than play for Diacre.The French soccer federation announced the change, saying an investigation it had commissioned had revealed “a very significant divide” between Diacre and her team. In recent weeks, at least three French players, including the star defender Wendie Renard, had announced they would skip this year’s World Cup because of concerns about the team’s leadership and atmosphere, an unspoken — but unmistakable — critique of Diacre.The situation inside the team, the federation said Thursday, had deteriorated enough that leaving Diacre in her post was now actively harming France’s chances of success. “This fracture,” the federation said in a statement, “has reached a point of no return.”Diacre’s firing came one day after she had complained that her critics were running a “smear campaign” against her and vowed to remain in charge of the team, and a week after she lost a powerful ally when Noël Le Graët, the powerful president of the French federation who had supported her, resigned after a report that was critical of his own management.Diacre, who in 2014 had become the first woman to coach a professional men’s team in France, had led the women’s team since 2017. She led her team to the quarterfinals of the World Cup on home soil and to the semifinals of the European Championship in England last year. But her tenure also was marked by years of private and public disputes with some of her team’s best players — stars like Eugénie Le Sommer, Amandine Henry and Renard — and repeated complaints about her management style.Known as a taskmaster with no patience for mistakes, dissent or defeat — “What we remember is the final result, and nothing else,” Diacre once said — she was viewed as a cold and ruthless force by some who played for her. She would drop players for not being fit enough, and cut others after they criticized her methods or her tactics. Henry, a star for France’s team for years, said she learned she had been cut from the World Cup roster in 2019 in a phone call from Diacre that lasted “14 or 15 seconds.”Wendie Renard announced last month that she would skip the World Cup; her reasons were widely seen as a rebuke of Diacre’s leadership.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut that driving style also had pushed players away, including several key members of Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, France’s dominant women’s team, and its top domestic rival Paris St.-Germain. The goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi, for example, has said she will not play for her country while Diacre is in charge, and last month Renard’s decision to skip the World Cup was quickly echoed by two of her teammates, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Kadidiatou Diani.“It is a sad day,” Renard wrote on social media when she announced she was out of the World Cup, “but necessary to preserve my mental health.”It is unclear if Diacre’s dismissal might lead Renard, or any of the other players who had said they would not play for Diacre, to make themselves available to the national team again.The decision to drop Diacre as coach so soon before the World Cup could upend — or, in the view of Diacre’s critics, rescue — the preparations of one of the favorites in this summer’s championship. France will open the tournament against Jamaica on July 23, and then will play Brazil and Panama to complete the group stage.The team’s next two games, among its final chances to get together before the World Cup kicks off in July, are a set of friendlies against Colombia and Canada in April.France did not name a replacement for Diacre, but it did seem to issue a veiled warning to the team’s players.“The way used by the players to express their criticisms will no longer be acceptable,” the federation statement said, adding that it planned to propose a change in the governance of the women’s team that would introduce new layer of oversight. More

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      France’s Le Graët Steps Down but Lands on His Feet With FIFA

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      Noël Le Graët quit after an investigation found federation staff members had endured sexual and mental abuse, but he will stay in soccer: FIFA has hired him to run its Paris office.PARIS — Noël Le Graët, the embattled president of France’s soccer federation, stepped down on Tuesday, bringing an end to the long tenure of an executive whose grip on power — aided by powerful friendships — endured through on-field triumphs and off-field scandals.Battered by accusations of misconduct and mismanagement, Le Graët finally yielded to mounting calls for his removal at a special meeting of the board of the French federation, widely known by its three letter acronym, F.F.F. His announcement came two weeks after the completion of an audit into the organization revealed years of improper behavior even as France produced some of its best national teams, sending its men’s team to consecutive World Cup finals and hosting the Women’s World Cup on home soil in 2019.The audit had been commissioned by France’s sports minister amid growing reports of personal misconduct by Le Graët, including his sending inappropriate late-night text messages to female staff members. The sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, had publicly called for Le Graët’s resignation in January. On Tuesday, she hailed what she called “the right decision for the F.F.F. and for himself.”But even as he quit the federation under pressure, his place in soccer seemed secure: FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, appointed Le Graët last year to oversee its new office in Paris, and on Tuesday several of his federation colleagues offered him congratulations on that role.Misgivings about Le Graët’s continued presence in the presidency he had held since 2011 only increased as he created a string of controversies while the investigation was ongoing. Late last year, he infuriated French government officials before the World Cup by playing down the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar. After the tournament, he made derogatory statements about Zinedine Zidane, a World Cup winner considered to be one of the best players France has ever produced. Le Graët later took back his remarks and apologized to Zidane.Still, the 81-year-old Le Graët retained numerous allies despite the turmoil, including Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, who had reportedly lobbied on his behalf as his ouster neared. Infantino last year named Le Graët as his presidential delegate to oversee FIFA’s new office in Paris, an outpost that has taken on increasingly important roles that had once been the exclusive preserve of staff members at FIFA’s headquarters in Switzerland.Éric Borghini, a member of the French federation board present at Tuesday’s meeting, suggested Le Graët would continue in that role. It is unclear, though, if Le Graët will continue with his efforts to retain his seat on the soccer body’s governing board, the FIFA Council, in an election in April.Philippe Diallo, the vice president of the federation, will act as interim president of the F.F.F. until June 10, the date of its next general assembly.Far from excoriating Le Graët, his former colleagues rallied around the now ex-president. “Everywhere he has gone, the institutions and clubs he has led have been successful,” Diallo said.The official federation statement announcing his exit sought to celebrate French soccer’s successes under Le Graët, noting that under his direction France’s men’s and women’s teams had secured 11 titles and played in six international finals. The statement also pointed to infrastructure developments and the economic health of the federation.It did not make reference to the turmoil that has enveloped the federation since the men’s team’s success at the 2018 World Cup in France, including allegations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse. Some of those problems grew so toxic that several senior staff members complained about the workplace environment, a crisis that in 2020 forced Le Graët to call in an outside expert specializing in repairing damaged workplaces.Those efforts failed to yield results beyond preserving the positions of Le Graët and his second in command, Florence Hardouin. Hardouin is negotiating her departure from the federation after the government-sponsored investigation accused her of employing “brutal methods and erratic behavior.” Her legal team has since suggested she acted as a whistle-blower in the claims against Le Graët.The federation sought to protect itself in the aftermath of his resignation, claiming the investigation failed to reveal any systemic failure or any failure to fulfill its core mission. “The F.F.F. nevertheless notes that this report is based less on objective facts than on assessments which have sometimes led to a disproportionate denigration of the body,” it said.Current and former officials, meanwhile, continued to insist that removing Le Graët would not be enough to fix the federation’s problems.“The important point is not Le Graët and Hardouin,” said Pierre Samsonoff, the former head of the federation’s amateur soccer division. “What is important is the way the institution is ruled.” More

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      Ahead of Paris Olympics, France’s Sports Minister Faces Trials by Fire

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      Amélie Oudéa-Castéra’s first year in office brought chaos at the Champions League final and scandals in multiple sports. With the Paris Olympics looming, her toughest days may be ahead.PARIS — It was the middle of September and Amélie Oudéa-Castéra needed to know if there was any truth in the lurid headlines she was reading.As France’s sports minister, Oudéa-Castéra had the power to summon Noël Le Graët, the octogenarian who has run French soccer for more than a decade, and confront him about the allegations about his behavior: serious accusations of inappropriate comments and text messages to female staff members; whispers about heavy lunchtime drinking sessions; news reports that the federation had ignored sexual harassment and sexual abuse.“Before those revelations from the press I personally did not know Noël Le Graët,” Oudéa-Castéra said in an interview last week. “I had never met him.”So Oudéa-Castéra, not yet four months into her post, reached out arranged a meeting. On the appointed day, the two executives sat down at a circular glass table in Oudéa-Castéra’s cavernous sixth-floor office, and she began to ask questions. Unable to reconcile the two conflicting narratives, the news coverage and the denials being offered by Le Graët, Oudéa-Castéra commissioned an independent investigation.By the time it was underway, the stack of problems on her desk had already grown.Dark CloudsThese should be heady days for French sports. The country’s men’s soccer team played in its second straight World Cup final in December, and its women’s squad will be among the favorites in its own championship this summer. France will host the Rugby World Cup later this year, and then step onto the biggest stage in sports in 2024, when it will welcome the world to the Summer Olympics in Paris.All of those events had been expected to bring an outsize focus on French sports and by extension on Oudéa-Castéra, an old friend and college contemporary of President Emmanuel Macron who took the job of sports minister last May. Few could have predicted how hot that spotlight would become.A former junior tennis champion and professional player, Oudéa-Castéra had arrived at the sports ministry from a short stint leading the French tennis federation. She came armed with folders filled with big ideas and grand plans, excited to use her office to promote youth affairs, health and job creation.Instead, she has been fighting fires almost nonstop.Noël Le Graët faces a board vote this week that could see him removed as president of the French soccer federation.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne of her major headaches may be addressed this week: A decision on the status of Le Graët is expected during a meeting of the soccer federation’s board on Tuesday.But there are more ahead, as leadership scandals, ugly public disputes and mounting security concerns have cast a cloud over French sports that never seems to lift. The soccer federation’s leadership problems, for example, extend far beyond one man. The same is true for rugby. And, most disconcertingly for Oudéa-Castéra, she is still facing withering criticism for her role in the response to security problems at last year’s Champions League final.That game took place only eight days after Oudéa-Castéra took office. But her comments in the aftermath of the match, which descended into chaos after organizational and policing failures saw thousands of Liverpool fans trapped in dangerously small areas, cast her as a central figure in a near disaster, and continue to shadow her to this day. That no one died in the crushes outside the stadium gates, investigators later concluded, was “a matter of chance.”Much of the criticism of Oudéa-Castéra is linked to a specific claim that she and France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, made publicly: that 30,000 to 40,000 fans with fake tickets, or without tickets at all, were partly to blame for the crowd problems.Oudéa-Castéra said she had merely relied on numbers supplied to government officials at the time, and in an interview said that she still believes the figures, in the context they were provided to her, remain true. But the anger, particularly among Liverpool fans, shows no sign of abating. Hours after she sat for an interview in her office last week, a banner was raised in the stands at a Champions League game in Liverpool — a rematch of the final with Real Madrid — that featured cartoon images of Oudéa-Castéra and Darmanin with long noses, captioned with the French word for liars.“Can I ask you a question?” Oudéa-Castéra said, stopping the interview at one point. “It always feels a little bit like we have not apologized.” She has done so repeatedly, she said, writing letters to Liverpool’s chairman and maintaining a regular dialogue with him about the final. She says that she recognizes her initial comments were particularly sensitive for Liverpool fans since some in Paris that day had survived the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.That is why, she said, she has sought to make amends in the nine months since the game. It is also why the ongoing criticism stings. “For me it’s very sensitive because I cannot admit people say that we have lied,” Oudéa-Castéra said. “It’s not true.”Liverpool fans delivered their scathing verdict on Oudéa-Castéra and Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, during a Champions League match last week, calling them liars. Michael Regan/Getty ImagesAn independent report commissioned by European soccer’s governing body came to a different conclusion. It argued that the figures for fans without tickets or with fake tickets had been incorrectly inflated and then stated as fact by top officials “to deflect responsibility for the planning and operational failures of stakeholders.”Oudéa-Castéra acknowledged mistakes were made in real time and in the immediate aftermath as officials scrambled to parse fact from fiction. She said her office eventually concluded ticketing was only one of “seven or eight things” that combined to create a potentially deadly crush. But she also conceded that the veracity of official remarks was not the only issue.“The one thing we should have clearly done much better was right from Minute 1 to say how sorry we were to Liverpool fans,” she said. “Clearly the time lag in showing that sorrow and that empathy lacked.”Weeks after the chaotic scenes at the Stade de France, Oudéa-Castéra and others were summoned by a French Senate committee to explain the failures. Almost as soon as the senate delivered its verdict in July, though, she was facing a whole new set of crises.New ProblemsWeeks after the Senate hearing, chaos engulfed the organizers of the Rugby World Cup, which will be the biggest sporting event in France before next year’s Olympics.In August, the tournament’s chief executive was suspended and Oudéa-Castéra ordered an investigation amid reports of a “climate of terror” within the organizing committee. In October, the chief executive, Claude Atcher, was fired.The plans for the tournament were further undermined when the powerful head of French rugby, Bernard Laporte, was convicted in December on charges of corruption and influence peddling. Laporte resigned in January, reportedly minutes before he arrived for a meeting in which Oudéa-Castéra was to be present.(Days later, the head of France’s national handball league, Bruno Martini, was out, too; he quit after pleading guilty in a child pornography case.)Oudéa-Castéra with Alexandre Martinez, right, the interim president of the embattled French rugby federation, at France’s Six Nations game against Scotland on Sunday.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPersuading Le Graët, the French soccer federation’s president, to leave has proved a far sterner task. Oudéa-Castéra has said publicly that he should resign but has to date declined to fire Le Graët herself, wary that ignoring the autonomy of French sports bodies — and soccer’s rules about government interference — might only make the situation worse.She has done little, though, to hide her opinions. Even before the investigation into Le Graët’s conduct had been completed, Oudéa-Castéra said she worried that he had begun to exhibit what she labeled “weird” behavior. First, he infuriated the French government by downplaying concerns over the treatment of migrant laborers in Qatar ahead of the World Cup. Then, after the tournament ended, he enraged fans and others by making derogatory statements about the French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane.“It was so inappropriate, so disrespectful, that you can only feel that is someone who is not 100 percent with his mind there,” Oudéa-Castéra said.The investigation has only strengthened Oudéa-Castéra’s belief that Le Graët should step down or be removed. “He cannot continue,” she said. “That is clear.”Asked why well-established problems inside the soccer federation, including accusations of bullying, harassment and sexism by top administrators reported by The New York Times in 2020, were only now being examined, Oudéa-Castéra said the true scale of the crisis had only recently emerged.Virgile Caillet, a former senior official at France’s athletics federation, said it was more likely something else that had stalled a reckoning: “a lack of courage” by sports administrators unwilling to take on powerful officials.Fabien Archambault, a sports historian, argued that Oudéa-Castéra’s presence in the post underlined its importance to Macron, especially as the Olympics approach. Previous sports ministers wielded far less power than Oudéa-Castéra, Archambault said, and would not have taken on entrenched leaders the way she has without the French president’s full support.“We have to do it,” Oudéa-Castéra said, “because there is also the need for the image of France to be a clean and positive one before we welcome the world.”The Current StormFor now, the focus in France remains on Le Graët, a man with powerful allies.After Oudéa-Castéra publicly called on him to resign in January following his comments about Zidane, FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, wrote to the French federation to remind it of the organization’s firm rules on government interference.“I think they wanted to say, ‘OK, the state is something, but we should be managing our own destiny,’” Oudéa-Castéra said. “In France it doesn’t work this way.”That will mean new oversight for soccer and other sports. It will mean a new focus on security ahead of the Olympics, and on fan safety during the Games. It will mean navigating a treacherous path between the International Olympic Committee, which is studying ways to return Russian athletes to competition, and a group of more than 30 nations — including France — that wants to see Russians banned while the war in Ukraine continues.It also suggests that the pile of problems on the desk in Oudéa-Castéra’s office will only continue to grow.“The responsibility is very heavy so I try to leverage every minute to be up to the challenge,” she said. “It’s clearly the challenge of my life.”The Stade de France, the site of serious crowd control failures at last May’s Champions League final, and the venue for track and field events and the closing ceremony at the Paris Olympics.James Hill for The New York Times More

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      The Female Soccer Players Challenging France’s Hijab Ban

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      SARCELLES, France — Every time Mama Diakité heads to soccer game, her stomach is in knots.It happened again on a recent Saturday afternoon in Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris. Her amateur team had come to face the local club, and Diakité, a 23-year-old Muslim midfielder, feared she would not be allowed to play in her hijab.This time, the referee let her in. “It worked,” she said at the end of the game, leaning against the fence bordering the field, her smiling face wrapped in a black Nike head scarf.But Diakité had only fallen through the cracks.For years, France’s soccer federation has banned players participating in competitions from wearing conspicuous religious symbols such as hijabs, a rule it contends is in keeping with the organization’s strict secular values. Although the ban is loosely enforced at the amateur level, it has hung over Muslim women’s players for years, shattering their hopes of professional careers and driving some away from the game altogether.Les Hijabeuses is an informal group of hijab-wearing women who play soccer together in an effort to draw attention to a French policy they say drives Muslim women out of the game.In an ever more multicultural France, where women’s soccer is booming, the ban has also sparked a growing backlash. At the forefront of the fight is Les Hijabeuses, a group of young hijab-wearing soccer players from different teams who have joined forces to campaign against what they describe as a discriminatory rule that excludes Muslim women from sports.Their activism has touched a nerve in France, reviving heated debates on the integration of Muslims in a country with a tortured relationship with Islam, and highlighting the struggle of French sports authorities to reconcile their defense of strict secular values with growing calls for greater representation on the field.“What we want is to be accepted as we are, to implement these grand slogans of diversity, inclusiveness,” said Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses, which has 80 members. “Our only desire is to play soccer.”The Hijabeuses collective was created in 2020 with the help of researchers and community organizers in an attempt to solve a paradox: Although French laws and FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, allow sportswomen to play in hijabs, France’s soccer federation prohibits it, arguing that it would break with the principle of religious neutrality on the field.Supporters of the ban say hijabs portend an Islamist radicalization taking over sports. But the personal stories of Hijabeuses members emphasize how soccer has been synonymous with emancipation — and how the ban continues to feel like a step backward.Founé Diawara, the president of Les Hijabeuses.Diakité began playing soccer at age 12, initially hiding it from her parents, who saw soccer as a boys’ sport. “I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” she said, calling it “a dream.”Jean-Claude Njehoya, her current coach, said that “when she was younger, she had a lot of skills” that could have propelled her to the highest level. But “from the moment” she understood the hijab ban would impact her, he said, “she didn’t really push herself further.”Diakité said she decided on her own to wear the hijab in 2018 — and to give up her dream. She now plays for a third-division club and plans to open a driving school. “No regret,” she said. “Either I’m accepted as I am, or I’m not. And that’s it.”Karthoum Dembele, a 19-year-old midfielder who wears a nose ring, also said she had to confront her mother to be allowed to play. She quickly joined a sports-intensive program in middle school and participated in club tryouts. But it wasn’t until she learned about the ban, four years ago, that she realized she may no longer be allowed to compete.“I had managed to make my mother give in and I’m told the federation won’t let me play,” Dembele said. “I told myself: What a joke!”Other members of the group recalled episodes when referees barred them from the field, prompting some, feeling humiliated, to quit soccer and turn to sports where hijabs are allowed or tolerated, like handball or futsal.Mama Diakité, who plays for Jeanne D’Arc Drancy, after a match in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris. Technically, Diakité is not allowed to play in a hijab, but referees often look the other way.Throughout last year, Les Hijabeuses lobbied the French soccer federation to overturn the ban. They sent letters, met with officials and even staged a protest at the federation’s headquarters — to no avail. The federation declined to comment for this article.Paradoxically, it was Les Hijabeuses’ staunchest opponents who finally put them in the spotlight.In January, a group of conservative senators tried to enshrine the soccer federation’s hijab ban in law, arguing that hijabs threatened to spread radical Islam in sports clubs. The move reflected a lingering malaise in France regarding the Muslim veil, which regularly stirs controversy. In 2019, a French store dropped a plan to sell a hijab designed for runners after a barrage of criticism.Energized by the senators’ efforts, Les Hijabeuses waged an intense lobbying campaign against the amendment. Making the most of their strong social media presence — the group has nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram — they launched a petition that gathered more than 70,000 signatures; rallied dozens of sport celebrities to their cause; and organized games before the Senate building and with professional athletes.Vikash Dhorasoo, a former France midfielder who attended a game, said the ban left him dumbfounded. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “It’s the Muslims who are targeted here.”Members of Les Hijabeuses meet regularly with Diawara (in pink sweater and black hijab) and supporters like the sociologist Haifa Tlili, left, who have offered help in their fight against France’s soccer federation. Stéphane Piednoir, the senator behind the amendment, denied the accusation that the legislation was aimed at Muslims specifically, saying its focus was all conspicuous religious signs. But he acknowledged that the amendment had been motivated by the wearing of the Muslim veil, which he called “a propaganda vehicle” for political Islam and a form of “visual proselytizing.” (Piednoir also has condemned the display of the Catholic tattoos of the P.S.G. star Neymar as “unfortunate” and wondered if the religious ban should extend to them.)The amendment was eventually rejected by the government’s majority in parliament, although not without frictions. The Paris police banned a protest organized by Les Hijabeuses, and the French sports minister, who said the law allows hijab-wearing women to play, clashed with government colleagues opposing the head scarf.The Hijabeuses’ fight may not be a popular one in France, where six in 10 people support banning hijabs in the street, according to a recent survey by the polling firm CSA. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate who will face President Emmanuel Macron in a runoff vote on April 24 — with a shot at a final victory — has said that if elected, she will ban the Muslim veil in public spaces.But, on the soccer field, everyone seems to agree that hijabs should be allowed.“Nobody minds if they play with it,” said Rana Kenar, 17, a Sarcelles player who had come to watch her team face Diakité’s club on a bitterly cold February evening.Kenar was sitting in the bleachers with about 20 fellow players. All said they saw the ban as a form of discrimination, noting that, at the amateur level, the ban was loosely enforced.Even the referee of the game in Sarcelles, who had let Diakité play, seemed at odds with the ban. “I looked the other away,” he said, declining to give his name for fear of repercussions.Les Hijabeuses held a celebrity game in February that drew athletes, actors and other supporters who oppose the hijab ban.Pierre Samsonoff, the former deputy head of the soccer federation’s amateur branch, said the issue would inevitably come up again in the coming years, with the development of women’s soccer and the hosting of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, which will feature veiled athletes from Muslim countries.Samsonoff, who initially defended banning the hijab, said he had since softened his stance, acknowledging the policy could end up ostracizing Muslim players. “The issue is whether we are not creating worse consequences by deciding to ban it on the fields than by deciding to allow it,” he said.Piednoir, the senator, said the players were ostracizing themselves. But he acknowledged never having spoken with any hijab-wearing athletes to hear their motivations, comparing the situation to “firefighters” being asked to go “listen to pyromaniacs.”Dembele, who manages the Hijabeuses’ social media accounts, said she was often struck by the violence of online comments and the fierce political opposition.“We hold on,” she said. “It’s not just for us, it’s also for the young girls who tomorrow will be able to dream of playing for France, for P.S.G.”Monique Jaques More

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      Karim Benzema, French Soccer Star, Is Convicted in Sex Tape Scandal

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      The Real Madrid striker was found guilty of being part of an attempt to blackmail a fellow player, charges that had led to his being dropped from his national team for more than five years.PARIS — Karim Benzema, a star striker for Real Madrid, was found guilty by a French court on Wednesday on charges that he was part of an attempt to blackmail a fellow player in a case involving a sex tape, a scandal that saw Benzema excluded from France’s national soccer team for more than five years.Benzema, 33, was given a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros, or about $84,000.He had been accused of helping four other men blackmail Mathieu Valbuena, a teammate in the France squad, over an intimate video that had been taken from Valbuena’s mobile phone.Benzema has always denied the accusations, and his lawyers quickly announced that he would appeal the verdict. He was preparing for Real Madrid’s Champions League match later on Wednesday against Sheriff Tiraspol and did not attend court for the decision.It was unclear how the verdict would affect Benzema’s standing on the national team. France dropped Benzema from the squad in 2015 because of the case, an exile that continued through the team’s World Cup victory in 2018. But Didier Deschamps, the French coach, surprisingly recalled him this year for the European Championship.Noël Le Graët, the president of the French soccer federation, had said this month that Benzema would not be automatically kicked off the team if found guilty, and on Wednesday he told RMC Sport that he had spoken with Deschamps and that both agreed that Benzema would not be “punished,” suggesting he would not be dropped from the team. “The manager has the right to pick whoever he wants,” Le Graët said.Since his return to the national team, Benzema has been a key player, despite France’s early exit from the Euros. Two of his most recent goals — in a match against Kazakhstan that qualified France for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — moved him among the top five highest scorers for his country.Benzema has won three Spanish league titles and four Champions Leagues with Real Madrid. This week he was shortlisted by FIFA for its annual best player awards, and he is also seen as a contender for the Ballon d’Or, soccer’s biggest individual prize for players, which will be announced on Monday.Four other defendants were tried on the charges of attempted blackmail, including Karim Zenati, one of Benzema’s childhood friends, and three men who acted as murky intermediaries and occasional fixers behind the scenes of soccer’s cash-infused world. They were also found guilty.Zenati was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Of the others, two were given jail terms, of two and of two and a half years, and one received an 18-month suspended sentence.On top of criminal fines, the defendants were also ordered to pay €250,000, or about $281,000, in damages to Valbuena. They are jointly responsible for €150,000 of that total, with Benzema ordered to pay another €80,000 individually and the other defendants a further €5,000 each.The court in Versailles, southwest of Paris, heard at trial last month how Valbuena was first alerted in 2015 by another France teammate to the existence of an intimate video of him, believed to have been stolen from Valbuena’s mobile phone.In June of that year, Valbuena received several phone calls from men threatening to publish the video if he did not pay them tens of thousands of euros. Valbuena refused and instead filed a criminal complaint.After several unsuccessful attempts, the blackmailers were suspected of having contacted Zenati, in hopes that he would push Benzema to speak with Valbuena and encourage him to pay, the court was told.In October 2015, in a conversation with Valbuena at the French squad’s training facilities in Clairefontaine, near Paris, Benzema said that he could help his teammate by putting him in touch with someone who could fix the problem, the court heard.Benzema, who did not attend the trial, has acknowledged that he acted as an intermediary but has always maintained that he was merely offering Valbuena friendly advice on how to handle the blackmailing attempt, not taking part in it.But Valbuena said that he had interpreted Benzema’s role differently. “I felt like Karim Benzema wanted to scare me,” Valbuena testified at trial, according to French news reports.After the conversation between the players, Benzema spoke crudely and mockingly about his teammate in a phone call with Zenati that was tapped by the police and later leaked to news media.On the call, which was played at trial, Benzema told Zenati that Valbuena “isn’t taking us seriously” and that Benzema had told Valbuena, “If you want the video to be destroyed, my friend comes up to see you in Lyon and you sort it out face to face with him.”Benzema’s lawyers argued that deriding a teammate over the phone was not a crime and that the charges against Benzema rested solely on Valbuena’s interpretation of the conversation, in which money was not mentioned.Antoine Vey, one of Benzema’s lawyers, told reporters in Versailles on Wednesday that the court itself had acknowledged that Benzema did not know about the full extent of the blackmailing plot.“How, without being informed of the backdrop to this affair, could he have been an accomplice to the project?” Vey said, adding that Benzema would testify on appeal.But the court found that Benzema had gotten “personally” and “insistently” involved in the blackmail efforts and had used “ruses and lies” to convince Valbuena — warning him about the consequences if the video was published, portraying the blackmailers as more hardened criminals than they really were and advising him not to contact the police.Benzema “deliberately brought his aid and assistance” to the blackmailers, and the tapped phone call with Zenati showed that the striker harbored “no benevolence at all” toward his fellow player, the court said in a summary of its ruling.The case made Benzema the focus of intense criticism in France, especially on the political right, and it created a rift between him and the French squad. In 2016, Benzema, who is of Algerian descent, told a Spanish newspaper that Deschamps had “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France” by agreeing to leave him off the national team.But the men appeared to have reconciled before this year’s Euros, when Deschamps said he had held a long discussion with the player before recalling him.“Everyone has the right to make mistakes,” Deschamps said in May. More

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      Nike and UEFA Express Concern Over Crisis at French Soccer Federation

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyQuestions Mount for a French Soccer Federation in CrisisNike, the federation’s biggest sponsor, and European soccer’s governing body have contacted the federation about a scandal involving a young player at its elite academy.Noël Le Graët, the president of the French soccer federation, with the organization’s director general, Florence Hardouin.Credit…Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy More

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      Un coach, des joueurs mineurs et des limites floues

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      Credit…Ed Alcock/eyevine, via ReduxUn coach, des joueurs mineurs et des limites flouesDes SMS inappropriés. Des pesées sans vêtements. Des invitations à passer la nuit chez lui. Un encadrant renvoyé par la Fédération française de football pour ses contacts avec un joueur adolescent continue de travailler dans le milieu. La FFF dit qu’elle n’y peut rien.Credit…Ed Alcock/eyevine, via ReduxSupported byContinue reading the main storyBy More