Another reason why French coaches are having few job opportunities is the wave of foreign owners flocking to Ligue 1. Former Montpellier defender - Bertrand Reuzeau shared that French teams are belonging to foreign owners too much, causing a negative impact on the domestic coaching market.
Previously, French teams had French owners, making things easier. Now, in the heart of France, there are no large representative companies like Portugal or the UK. From there, the path for French coaches to go from the domestic market to abroad is almost a dead end.
There are currently 11/18 Ligue-1 sides with foreign owners. When foreign owners take over, they do not tend to prioritize local coaches.
The construction of a network of French teachers has also been neglected. BlueCo - an American corporation that owns Chelsea and Strasbourg, appointed Liam Rosenior (English) as director of Strasbourg in the summer of 2024 following the departure of Patrick Vieira.
Toulouse, owned by US investment firm RedBird, replaced Philippe Montanier with Carles Martinez Novell (Spanish) in 2023. The new owner of Saint-Etienne - Canadian investment company Kilmer Sports Ventures has chosen Eirik Horneland ( Norwegian) after parting ways with Olivier Dall'Oglio in December 2024.
Pierre Sage is doing very well at Lyon after taking charge from the youth team in November 2023. However, he was suddenly fired by American boss John Textor. Sage was replaced by a Portuguese strategist - Paulo Fonseca. Reuzeau described Sage's sacking as "extremely disappointing".
The three teams leading Ligue-1 all have foreign coaches. Luis Enrique (PSG, Spanish at PSG), Adi Hutter (author, AS Monaco), Roberto De Zerbi (Italy, Olympique Marseille).
The French football tournament is dominated by foreign coaches. That is the nameless sadness of those who love this football background.
"There are many foreign owners coming here to own teams. They only stick to what they know. Therefore, they like to recruit coaches from their hometown. This situation is quite similar to English football when domestic coaches are gradually decreasing.
French coaches are having difficulty finding jobs in their home country. There are no French coaches working for big teams. Apart from PSG, most of the remaining teams do not have enough potential to provide the coach with the necessary number of players.
The French football foundation is very good but we were not given enough working conditions to show all that we have" - Antonetti, Technical Director of Bastia ( playing in Ligue 2).
As the number of top coaches has decreased, the French Football Federation's selection process has also become increasingly strict.
Brevet d'entraineur professionnel de football (BEPF) is the highest quality coaching certificate in France, compared to UEFA's professional certificate. It is famous for its difficulty and very few coaches can possess it.
Having a BEPF degree is difficult, the standard for studying training courses, thereby being granted this degree is not simple. To apply for these courses, former players must have at least 5 years of coaching experience.
They need to play at least 150 matches in Ligue-1. Otherwise, they must have played for France at least 10 times in official tournaments.
Not only BEPF, other certificates are also very difficult to get or require a lot of money to pay for courses. BEPF's tuition fee is 27,100 Euros.
The total cost of the course is estimated at around 60,000 Euros, including studying to get other certificates such as Diplome d'Etat Superieur (DES) or Higher State diploma.
This is a huge amount of money, so coaches often tend to link up with their home team to help them cover some of the costs.
