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    France’s Corinne Diacre Is Not Interested in Your Opinion

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    Coach Corinne Diacre set a high bar for France at the Euros. But tying one’s fate to results works only when they’re good.ROTHERHAM, England — Corinne Diacre punched the air, allowed herself a cursory smile of satisfaction, and then turned on her heel. She managed to dodge the first couple of staff members rushing past her on their way to join the celebrations on the field after France’s quarterfinal victory, only to find her path blocked by Gilles Fouache.Fouache, France’s assistant goalkeeping coach, is not an easy obstacle to avoid: broad-shouldered and shaven-headed and with the air of a kindly bouncer. Diacre, a redoubtable central defender in her playing days, quickly recognized there was no way past. Fouache swept his manager up in a brief bear hug, and then she sent him on his way, too.Once she had done so, her smile melted away. She sought out her Dutch counterpart, offered some words of congratulation and condolence, and then made her way to her players. A handful received a pat on the back. Others were offered only some immediate performance feedback. She had come to Euro 2022 on business, not pleasure.By some measures, that victory against the Netherlands last weekend was enough to ensure Diacre had done her job. France had never previously made it past the quarterfinals of a European Championship; Eve Périsset’s penalty, deep into extra time, finally ended the hoodoo.Diacre, though, arrived in England with slightly higher expectations, and so did her country. France, after all, is home to two of the most powerful women’s soccer clubs, the reigning European champion Lyon and its great rival, Paris St.-Germain. Diacre had an unrivaled pipeline of talent from which to create a squad.To her, and to French soccer, it felt reasonable to declare reaching the final the team’s “stated ambition.” On Wednesday night, it failed to meet it. France might only have fallen narrowly to Germany, by 2-1 in their semifinal in Milton Keynes, England, but it fell nonetheless. And that, unfortunately, gives Diacre a problem.Corinne Diacre and France have never reached the final of a major tournament.Molly Darlington/ReutersA couple of weeks after Diacre, 47, and her players arrived in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the small town in rural Leicestershire where France’s national team has taken up residence for this tournament — that it chose a spot with a distinctly French name is, apparently, coincidental — a journalist from a French magazine contacted the team’s press officer to ask why no local junior team had yet been invited to watch a training session.Such outreach initiatives are a staple of major tournaments, a fairly simple public-relations maneuver designed to thank the community for its hospitality. France, by contrast, had made no contact with amateur sides in Ashby. The team, the journalist was told, was not in England to make friends.It is a tunnel vision that is characteristic of Diacre’s management style. She veers between distant and acerbic with the news media, despite employing a P.R. “teacher”; she has admitted that communication is not her strong suit. She makes no secret of the fact that she does not enjoy the public-facing aspects of her job.With her players, too, she has not always fostered the most conducive relationships. One of her first moves after taking charge of her nation’s team five years ago was to strip Wendie Renard, France’s totemic defender, of the captaincy.Wendie Renard, surrounded by celebrating rivals once again.Carl Recine/ReutersSince then, she has contrived to alienate a number of players from Lyon, the country’s dominant women’s team, to such an extent that Sarah Bouhaddi, the goalkeeper, claimed she had inculcated a “very, very negative environment.” Bouhaddi has subsequently said she will not play for her country while Diacre is in charge.Another veteran, Gaëtane Thiney, was dropped for criticizing Diacre’s tactics, and a third, Amandine Henry, was dropped after she had described the French squad during the 2019 World Cup as “complete and utter chaos.” The call in which Diacre broke the news lasted, Henry said, “14 or 15 seconds; I will remember it all my life.” More remarkable still was that Henry had inherited the captaincy from Renard; her banishment meant that Renard was restored to the post.Diacre’s biggest gamble of all, though, may well have been her squad for this tournament. Diacre was already without both Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo, a legacy of the assault scandal that has roiled French soccer for much of the last year, but she also chose to omit both Henry and Eugénie Le Sommer, France’s career goal-scoring leader.The manager defended the moves, citing the need to protect and preserve the “mentality” of her squad. Early results bore her out. There was no sign, in France’s month or so in England, of club enmities poisoning the atmosphere among the players. The longstanding divide between the Lyonnaises and the Parisians seemed to have evaporated.Besides, it was not as if Diacre did not have players of impeccable quality to replace them. The depth of talent at her command was such that she could juggle her team for each of France’s first four games of the tournament with no apparent diminution of quality.France became the first team to put a ball in Germany’s net at the Euros, but its score was officially credited as a German own goal.Rui Vieira/Associated PressThe issue, though, was that making those calls turned Diacre into a martyr of outcome. Had France met her aspirations, and reached Sunday’s final against England, she would have been vindicated; leaving Henry and Le Sommer at home would have seemed like a masterstroke, proof of her bold conviction.That France did not means it is all but impossible not to wonder whether the outcome might have been different had two of the key players on the best club team in the women’s game been on the field, or even on the substitutes’ bench, available to call on in an emergency.In truth, the border between those realities is slender, and blurred. It hinges on a moment, an instant: Had France remained attentive when Svenja Huth picked up the ball on the edge of the penalty area, rather than assuming it had drifted out of play, then perhaps it would still be in the tournament, and Diacre’s call would have paid off.It is the manager, though, who made that bargain, who made it plain that the gauge of success and failure was what she did, not how she did it. France came to Euro 2022 with a destination in mind. Now that it has fallen short, it cannot claim credit for the journey. More

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      England Routs Sweden to Seal Place in Euro 2022 Final

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      Alessia Russo’s backheel highlighted her team’s 4-0 rout of Sweden and sealed England’s place in Sunday’s Euro 2022 final.Follow live updates of the Euro 2022 final.SHEFFIELD, England — The crowd at Bramall Lane required three viewings before it could settle on the appropriate response. The first, in real time, prompted a jubilant, triumphal roar. The second, on the giant screen in a corner of the stadium as England’s players celebrated below, drew a gasp of appreciation.It was only when almost 30,000 people had the chance to watch the close-up replay, though, that they could see what, exactly, had happened. Alessia Russo, the substitute striker, had not only scored for England with a backheel. She had not only scored with a backheel with a defender on her back, or while also nutmegging Hedvig Lindahl, Sweden’s goalkeeper.What she had done, in fact, was all of the above, and she had done it in the semifinals of a major international tournament, and certainly the biggest game of her life so far.RUSSO WITH THE BACKHEEL NUTMEG TO PUT ENGLAND ONE STEP FROM THE FINAL 😳🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/EGz34224Wl— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) July 26, 2022
      It was only then, armed with a full suite of information, that the crowd could determine the correct reaction. Bramall Lane, in unison, laughed. Not cruelly, not derisively, but in delight and wonder and disbelief.England does not, as a rule, expect to win games of this magnitude. It certainly does not expect to have fun while doing it.Carl Recine/ReutersCarl Recine/ReutersRusso’s backheel caught goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl by surprise, the ball passing right between her legs. By the time she realized what had happened, Russo and the stadium were celebrating.Molly Darlington/ReutersThat can be attributed to the general undercurrent of fatalism that infuses the country’s sporting psyche at all times, of course, but this team — which humbled Sweden, the world’s second-ranked team, by 4-0 — has its own bespoke ghosts, too. England’s women had, after all, made it to the semifinals of their last three major tournaments. They met Japan in the 2015 World Cup, and lost. They met the Netherlands in the 2017 European Championship, and lost. They met the United States in the 2019 World Cup, and by then a pattern was emerging.By the time Euro 2022 got underway, England’s players were aware that the pressure to end that streak was considerable. The tournament was on their home soil. The Football Association had appointed Sarina Wiegman, the coach of the Dutch team that had broken English hearts in 2017, as manager, at no little expense. The vast majority of the squad was corralled from elite teams competing in England’s booming Women’s Super League.As if that was not exacting enough, England’s imperious sweep through the group phase — scoring five goals against Northern Ireland and a dizzying eight against Norway — served to swell hopes and lift expectations.The players have, in keeping with bizarre tradition, started to receive curious questions at news conferences about whether their success might soothe, in some ill-defined and deeply improbable way, the country’s very real concerns about the price of fuel and the soaring cost of basic amenities and a government in self-inflicted disarray.That confluence of circumstances might have been expected to inhibit England as the prospect of the final, of glory, hovered ever closer on the horizon. Wiegman’s team had struggled in its quarterfinal against a depleted Spain. Sweden threatened to pose a sterner test still. It is not yet a year since the Swedes had competed in the Olympic final. Its team is regarded, by no less an authority than the FIFA rankings, as the finest side in Europe.England’s Ellen White. She and her teammates have outscored their Euros opponents by 20-1.John Sibley/ReutersSweden, the world’s second-ranked team, endured its heaviest defeat ever in a European Championship.Matthew Childs/ReutersAnd for a while it seemed as if this might be another calvary. Sweden carved open a glaring opportunity with its first attack of the game. Inside the first 15 minutes, England had required three fine saves from its goalkeeper, Mary Earps, and the intervention of the crossbar to retain any hope.But while the individual talent at Wiegman’s disposal is, perhaps, only rivaled in this tournament by that of the French, the collective she has crafted is marked by its composure, its serenity, its abiding self-belief. England did not wilt as Sweden battered at its door and pummeled its defenses. It did not allow itself to be overawed, or intimidated, or fretful.Instead, it waited for its opportunity, taking the lead through Beth Mead, the tournament’s leading scorer, a little after half an hour. That might, for a different team, have been the cue to sit back, to hunch its shoulders and grit its teeth. But that is not Wiegman’s way, and so it is not England’s, either.At halftime, the stadium announcer declared that, “as things stand, England is going to the final.” It felt just a little hubristic, the sort of pronouncement that might come to be seen as a source of regret, though not for long. Within four minutes of the start of the second half, Lucy Bronze had doubled the lead, her header drifting achingly slowly past Lindahl’s dive.That goal would, in hindsight, have been enough, but at the time it was not, not enough to be sure. Only with Russo’s improvisational, instinctive brilliance could the crowd — could the players — relax. A few minutes later, Fran Kirby, England’s creative heartbeat, ran through on goal. She, too, was in one of the biggest games of her career. She, too, knew this was serious.But still she chose the indulgent option, lofting a delicate, arcing chip just beyond Lindahl’s grasp, deflecting off her gloves into the net behind her. It was the sort of thing a player tries when they are, despite the situation in which they find themselves, having fun.Sarina Wiegman, who led the Netherlands to the Euros title on home soil in 2017, is one win from doing the same for England.Molly Darlington/ReutersAfter the final whistle, the players lingered on the field. They took the applause from all four corners of the stadium. They listened as all of soccer’s great standards — Dua Lipa and Dana International and the White Stripes — crackled from the speakers.Ellen White, the striker, led the crowd in a chorus of “Sweet Caroline,” her eyes wide and her smile almost baffled. Wiegman, regarded even by her squad as an austere, demanding presence, bounced and jumped and danced with the players. England had been in the semifinals of a major international tournament, and not only had it won, but it had enjoyed itself, and nobody wanted to let that feeling go. More