Like a boy . . . . Corinne Diacre, a professional soccer coach like all the others?

Summary: This article proposes, mainly from the point of view of the sociology of professional groups (Demazière & Gadéa, 2009), to discuss the career of Corinne Diacre, one of the rare women to enter and last in the coaching of high level French football. If by successively occupying all the technical positions historically occupied by men and by maintaining herself in the exercise of these different functions, Corinne Diacre is a pioneer in the coaching of professional football, her career reveals many similarities with the professional group to which she belongs. However, given the state of development of so-called "women's" football in France, her career path also has a number of singularities. In a context which favours a structural change in the status of women in French society, Corinne Diacre thus becomes the banner of a national cause which football leaders can only promote. The ongoing institutionalisation and professionalisation of women's football thus makes it possible to understand the singular status attributed to the women's football coach: a pioneer, in the literal sense of the term, a soldier employed in earthmoving work or in the development of defensive positions which opens up the field of possibilities for other women in this professional space.