In January 2016, the situation of French coaches was still stable in the highest level arenas in Europe. Didier Deschamps was then France's head coach for more than three years.
Just a few months later, he and his students will enter the EURO 2016 final. Two years later, Les Bleus will become the 2018 World Cup champions.
Zinedine Zidane has just taken office at Real Madrid to replace Rafael Benitez. Just a few months later, he will win the Champions League for the first time as a coach, opening a streak of 3 consecutive years of winning this prestigious arena.
"Profesor" Arsene Wenger was still in charge at Arsenal at that time. That was the season Leicester surprisingly became Premier League champions and the "Gunners" were the second team.
That is Arsenal's best achievement in 11 consecutive years. That was also the time when two French coaches were preparing to join the Premier League, Claude Puel (Southampton) and Remi Garde ( Aston Villa).
In the domestic league, Laurent Blanc is preparing to win the Ligue-1 championship for the second consecutive year with PSG. The 2015 2016 season also saw Lyon in good form, winning the runner-up position under Bruno Genesio.
By the end of the 2015-16 season, 19 of the 20 coaches in Ligue-1 were French or French, except for Leonardo Jardim of AS Monaco ( Portuguese).
That was the most golden period of the French coaches. After 9 years since then, the influence of the French coaches on European football is no longer there or at least no longer recognized.
With a very surprising statistic at club level, Patrick Vieira (Genoa) is the only French coach to work in 4/5 of Europe's top leagues: Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga (excluding France's Ligue-1.
Zidane is still waiting for a job in the French national team, Wenger has retired after leading Arsenal while Puel and Garde have not had any new job. Ismael has just been appointed by Blackburn Rovers in the Championship while Garcia is temporarily assigned to the Belgian national team. Blanc is currently in charge at Al Ittihad while Genesio has impressed by taking Lille to the 1/8 round of the Champions League.
The question now is why the French coaches who were once considered the trend of the world of top-flight football are gradually sinking into forgetfulness?
One of the biggest reasons is that French coaches do not have many opportunities to be exposed to job opportunities abroad.
The Athletic revealed that the representatives of these coaches do not have an influence over key units in teams outside of France.
This group also cannot build good enough relationships with corporations, in the context that those businesses invest more and more in football.
In recent years, French coaches have had clear competition with their Portuguese counterparts. Most French strategists have to take care of themselves in finding relationships. Meanwhile, the Portuguese coaches have many good communication channels, including super scout Jorge Mendes. Not only that, Portuguese coaches with a reputation like Jose Mourinho have helped their compatriots a lot.
On the organizing side, the Portuguese Football Coaches Association (ANTF) has been very active in raising the value of local strategists. ANTF has built a strategy called " Portuguese coaches" to hit the ball in all competitions.
They established their own website, built a Fanpage, and participated in many promotional campaigns. In particular, ANTF has also built many forums to gather Portuguese coaches who are currently interested in Marco Silva, Jorge Jesus or Carlos Queiroz.
"The Portuguese coaches are more united than us. They have big organizations, good, reputable representatives, have relationships at big clubs, that is what we lack" - Frederic Antonetti shared.
"The network of Portuguese coaches is great. When one was sacked, there were immediately 10 other Portuguese waiting to take the job. The French coaches have no problem, it's just that we're lacking too many networks" - a French strategist shared with The Athletic.
