"It's a crazy dream, but we want the Euroleague", says Marie-Sophie Obama

Marie-Sophie Obama has been the Deputy President of Lyon Asvel Féminin for four years.

-

Sébastien Clavel

• Like every Monday,

  20 minutes

  gives the floor to a sports actor or actress who is in the news of the moment.

  This week, it's time for Marie-Sophie Obama, deputy president of Lyon Asvel Féminin.

• The Lyon club is preparing for a major European meeting, with its two Euroleague quarter-finals played on Wednesday (6 p.m.) and Friday (8:05 p.m.) in Sopron (Hungary).

• Friend since adolescence and the Insep of Tony Parker, this former professional basketball player evokes in particular the place of women's sport in France.

Above Marie-Sophie Obama's desk stands a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, throwing one of her most emblematic

punchlines

 : "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition".

A cry of challenge which corresponds well to the deputy president of Lyon Asvel Féminin.

This former professional basketball player had several lives before accepting Tony Parker's proposal in 2017.

After leading the Lyon club to its first French league title in 2019, Marie-Sophie Obama dreams of an achievement in the Euroleague quarter-finals, which will take place on Wednesday (6 p.m.) and Friday (8:05 p.m.) in Sopron. (Hungary).

Between her friendship since Insep with "TP", the place of women's sport in France, and the rapid rise in Europe of the band to Marine Johannès, the 40-year-old leader has long confided in

20 Minutes

.

Did you dream of a long career as a professional basketball player when you joined Insep at 16?

I dreamed of playing at the highest level, of being selected for the French team, but I wasn't planning on a whole career.

The clubs were much less well structured at the time than they are today and I have never considered basketball as a real profession.

It was primarily my oxygen.

Have you felt a feminist throughout your career as a sportswoman and as a woman?

Initially, I was walking on eggshells on the subject, because this word often refers to fights carried in a very militant way.

But yes, when you look at the definition, I'm a feminist.

Saying that women have a role to play in society is a sensitivity that comes in the long run.

I have always had a rather independent mind.

I was brought up by my mother, a lawyer with a lot of character.

She married an African, when there should not be many

blacks

in the Gers at the end of the 1970s (smile).

Being a mother early enough (at 24), seeing the difficulties of combining professional and family life, realizing what society sends out when you get your partner to move to lead a career as a professional basketball player, it all played out.

Finally, when I took up my duties at Lyon Asvel Féminin, I clearly became aware of the difference in consideration between female performance and male performance.

In particular, did you nurture a certain frustration by noting that your Eurocup won in 2003 with Aix-en-Provence had not received much media coverage?

No, because even if it was still a good performance, it was not the Euroleague.

More generally, I have never suffered from a lack of media coverage of women's basketball.

It is sport to the

TAF

to find its audience in the media.

I find it too easy to cry as it can sometimes be done on this subject.

It's up to us, club leaders, to put in place projects that get people talking about what we do.

Marie-Sophie Obama (right), then Calais player in 2005, in a duel against Paoline Salagnac (here in Clermont), now sports director of Lyon Asvel Féminin.

- STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP

Why did your professional career stop at the age of 26, in Calais?

My second pregnancy put an end to it, because it was still complicated to manage everything.

I have no regrets about my professional career.

My agent then offered to work with him.

And then at one point, I felt suffocated in that environment.

I wanted to see what I was worth in real life.

I passed the nursing exam, then through a skills assessment and internship, I spent five years in a real estate agency.

It was this entrepreneurial experience that helped me the most when Tony called me and we took over the club.

Did you hesitate before responding favorably to Tony Parker in 2017?

I had really disconnected from basketball for two years and I wondered if I wanted to get back to it.

I felt a bit like I was about to come home after emancipating myself.

Tony made me understand that he didn't have a plan B or C, that he wouldn't take over the club if I didn't follow him.

It was a great opportunity to come back as a decision maker, and a great opportunity for women's basketball that a champion like that, who happens to be my friend, wants to get involved in this way.

From the start, I was clear: we are trying to take a different look at what is done in men's Asvel.

Wasn't it scary to arrive at the end of the season, to take over a club on the verge of going down in LF2?

We really felt the fear of relegation on May 2, 2017, the day of this match against Angers (won 68-66), which was decisive to stay in the top flight.

Before that, we had so much to do on all fronts, because the club was struggling economically.

I had never managed a business, I was entering the unknown.

We would have assumed a descent, but we know that it is complicated to go up.

We understood that we should tell a story and unite private and institutional partners around a human adventure.

Surrounded by Tony Parker, the former Sports Assistant for the city of Lyon Yann Cucherat, Nicolas Batum and Gaëtan Muller, Marie-Sophie Obama embarked on the Asvel adventure in 2017. - Lyon Asvel Féminin

What exactly were you thinking about?

There is the sporting but also the social and societal project of the club and the company.

We will never have the means for a club like Ekaterinburg (Russia), which has ten times our budget.

We need resources and energy other than simple athletic performance.

Sport as it is perceived in France must be able to play another role.

If we take sports competitions away from people who are currently confined or dependent on a curfew, there isn't much left to thrill.

We therefore realize the role of sport in our society, and we could also be a relay for public health, transmission and education policies.

In particular to promote the place of women, beyond sports performance?

Yes, with members of the club, we created the association Les Lumineuses in 2017. In our society, the male prism is still very present.

There, we want to serve as a sounding board for all these women with a remarkable history, whatever their fields of expression, as with our festival Lyon wins with its women.

In 2019, you rose up, like many leaders and players in LFB, against a column deemed "sexist" on RMC Sport.

Was it a pivotal moment for French women's basketball?

Let's say that we barely had the opportunity to be broadcast once on television than live, we paid the price for a column.

We are not against derision, but let us start a little before we fall on it.

We are told that we are not “bankable”, and we only show four actions with airballs and players falling, as it also happens in NBA games.

You have to be a minimum of respect.

Like the recurring mockery about the level of goalkeepers in football, is women's sport still struggling to be taken seriously in France?

Why always compare the performance of boys and girls?

We are not equal in physical terms.

I am not an excessive egalitarian.

I claim that we can play another basketball.

This basketball deserves to educate the eye so that we can see what it has to offer beautiful and different.

When your player Marine Johannès is nicknamed all the time "the Steph Curry for women", do you mind?

No, that doesn't shock me, because in my opinion there is no notion of gender here.

It's a remark purely related to the style of play. Marine is so unique, she plays a basketball which is not seen everywhere.

There are things that annoy me about Marine but not that.

Marine Johannès is Lyon's top scorer this season in the Euroleague, with 14.3 points on average.

- Adria Salido Zarco / SIPA

What do you think ?

It annoys me that we always put him on trial for not being a leader enough.

Many people expect her to take up the torch from Céline Dumerc in the France team.

Look at all she can offer you and leave her alone in Marine!

Let everyone be as they are.

She's not crazy about cameras, that's how it is.

We would like athletes who are at the same time good communicators, ambassadors, activists ...

Are you not looking primarily in your recruitment for very committed personalities off the field, such as the American winger Alysha Clark?

If we are dealing with commitment and sensitivity, that's a plus.

But what interests us above all is the player's state of mind.

Some high performing players are not with us today because, according to what we know, we are not completely in tune with their behavior in a group.

To achieve our crazy goal, there must be a complicity pushed to its paroxysm between all the players in the club.

Have you had any doubts about the way Tony Parker works, who surrounds himself a lot with his relatives on a professional level?

We spent our summers together with Tony, I always saw how he worked.

At the time, I was a fan of his plan to take over Asvel with Gaëtan Muller.

There, it scared me a little, I was afraid that we would lose our friendship.

But it brings so much behind to have blind trust in each other.

We don't want to be disappointed.

I am already a whole person but there, the emotional investment helps to surpass oneself.

The only time we yelled at in all these years was when I got there late for a binge.

Tony can't stand delays (laughs)!

Is it sometimes complicated to have a president with such a strong American mentality concerning the stated ambitions, where French sport usually prefers to advance hidden?

No, it's not complicated at all.

It's not my basic temperament, but I take a lot of inspiration from Tony.

To the point that you can announce that you want to win the Euroleague this season?

Yes, clearly, it does me good to say it: the ambition is of course to win the Euroleague.

We want to lift mountains.

After the maintenance torn off in 2017, the title of champion of France in 2019, are we continuing the supersonic ascent in Europe in 2021?

There is no date set for this Euroleague goal.

It's a crazy dream but we will achieve it.

He will come when we are ready and mature.

The quarter-finals are a first step.

This year, nothing is forbidden.

It's the same in France, we were champions a little prematurely, and we know that it will be harder to be again.

Don't these Euroleague quarter-finals suffer from a lack of fairness, since the two matches will be played in your opponent's room, in Sopron (Hungary)?

The rule of sanitary bubbles has been known since the start of the Euroleague season: there could not be a classic round trip in the Covid-19 context.

The constraints and the economic impact of a health bubble are quite heavy so we made the bet not to apply.

And then it is not necessarily easy for the players to be locked up for a whole week 20 minutes from their home.

So far, in the competition, it has turned out to be a false advantage for the teams that have hosted

hubs

.

Well, almost all of them except Sopron (laughs).

Each time, we experienced strong moments by leaving with all the employees.

There is a spirit of mission with the whole club mobilized, which creates positive energy.

In the world before Covid-19, the crazy Kop Asv'elles played a role in the club's first French championship title, in 2019 at Mado Bonnet.

- Infinity Nine Media / Alexia Leduc

During the title season, in 2018-2019, you must have been pleased to see the Kop Asv'elles and his forty or so noisy student supporters arrive at Mado-Bonnet, right?

It was more than happy to see these “crazy people” coming naturally to us.

They really helped create a special atmosphere, which led us to the title.

It was very encouraging to see that the gaze changed on the female performance.

The fact that they are students, basketball players and boys was a small victory in itself.

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• Sport

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• Euroleague

• Female sport

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• Asvel

• Tony Parker