Paris (AFP)

The quarrel between the coach Corinne Deacon and her captain Amandine Henry, far from dying out, tarnishes the qualification for Euro-2022 acquired with the manner Friday by the Blue stuck in a bad movie.

The collective joy of the French women in Guingamp, Brittany, after the clear victory against Austria (3-0), offered a striking contrast with the icy exit thirty minutes earlier of the Lyon community, face closed when joining the sidelines.

Invited to comment on this unusual coaching, Deacon cut the press short: "What interests me tonight is the collective performance."

The answer illustrates the multiple unspoken that accompany this last internship of the year 2020, marked by the icy reunion between the 46-year-old technician and the 31-year-old international last Monday at Clairefontaine.

The long-awaited great explanation with the captain, at the origin of an unprecedented media charge against the coach, never took place.

Why?

"For the moment the priority is the France group and what is happening on the field", swept Deacon Thursday during the press conference on the eve of the match.

That day at the Roudourou stadium, the media event took a special turn in that Henry, as captain, had to comply with the exercise.

It was her first speech since the shattering statements of mid-November on Canal +, where she denounced the management considered brutal and unfair of the technician.

When the Lyonnaise presented herself, with a sad face and an anxious look, her coach invited herself into the room at the same time, taking a seat in the back row while waiting her turn ...

Smiling, Deacon then succeeded the player to denounce the criticism "more personal than collective" aimed at her and mentioned the "minority" of players waving the specter of the crisis.

"If we have to come backwards, we must not come. The France team is not only an honor, it is a duty," she sermonized.

- "Very tense situation" -

At that time, the ten or so journalists present did not know that the two main actors in the conflict had sharply slashed each other a few hours earlier.

“In life everything has to be paid for!” Deacon launched to Henry in front of players dumbfounded by the suddenness of the attack, Wednesday during a muscular awakening in Clairefontaine.

"Are you threatening me?" Replied the midfielder, according to a scene described by RMC Sport and L'Equipe, confirmed to AFP by a source close to the Lyon locker room.

"The situation is very tense and is not going to improve," notes the latter.

"Deacon was obliged to summon all the Lyonnaises but secretly she pushes them to their limits".

And to clarify: "His plan is to disgust some players" so that they voluntarily move away from the selection, as goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi did this summer.

According to this source, to say that a "minority" of players complain about the coach, "it is false".

And to advance as proof the messages between internationals from various clubs, which she says she has consulted, where the coach is nicknamed "Coco-virus, chief warrant officer, dragon" or worse.

The divide between Deacon and Henry appears in any case as too pronounced, at the present time, for a solution to appear imminent.

The president of the Federation Noël Le Graët took advantage of his presence on Saturday noon at the Hôtel des Bleues in Saint-Brieuc, where he came to congratulate them on the qualification, to deliver a message of appeasement in private, away from the rest of the group.

"I spoke with Corinne, I spoke with Amandine. But now is not the time to recreate a problem in front of everyone whereas the girls yesterday (Friday), when you see them playing, are well together" , explained the Breton leader to AFP.

If the group is living well, of course, this is not the case for the two headliners who will perhaps deliver a new episode of their showdown by the last match on Tuesday in Vannes against Kazakhstan.

© 2020 AFP