As the final whistle blew, the France players did not sink to their knees. They stood on the pitch, staring into space, or slumped back in their seats on the bench, eyes down to the ground.

This was not a sense of disbelief, but one of deja vu. It had happened again. They had been knocked out of a major tournament at the quarter-finals for the eighth time in 15 years, only five years on from losing to the United States in the last-eight stage of their home World Cup.

From Leon Marchand with his four gold medals in the swimming to Cassandre Beaugrand kicking hard in the final lap to win the women’s triathlon, plenty of French athletes have drawn strength from participating in a home Olympics. Not so in women’s football.

It is a sport France has long struggled to fall in love with, as the attendances have shown. Before the quarter-finals, the tournament had the lowest attendance since the competition was introduced in 1996 (excluding Tokyo), with an average of 12,212 spectators per match. Games in Paris have been well attended, but the rest of the country has been nonplussed and this 1-0 quarter-final loss to Brazil will not have converted the doubters.

France toiled for large portions of the match. They created good chances, particularly for tournament top scorer…

The French, German and Zambian national women’s football teams have denied using drones to spy on opposition training sessions.

In an internal email, Canada head coach Bev Priestman, who has been suspended by FIFA for a year after admitting to using drone surveillance at the 2024 Paris Olympics, accused the top 10 teams of deploying the same covert methods.

“…for scouting it can be the difference between winning and losing and all top 10 teams do it,” Priestman wrote in an internal email dated March 20, 2024.

However, after the highest-ranked federations — Spain, France, Germany, USWNT, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Colombia, New Zealand, Nigeria, and Zambia — at the Paris Olympics were contacted by The Athletic, several denied this was the case and rebuked Priestman’s claims.

“We only wish to state that the French Federation is never using any spying methods on the opponents’ teams,” the French Football Federation (FFF) said. “We also add that, if the mail does exist, we strongly reject these baseless accusations.”

GO DEEPER

Canada’s Olympic soccer spying scandal explained: What we know, who’s involved and what’s next

“Team Zambia does not use drones to spy on our opponents,” said a spokesperson for Team Zambia. “Our approach to match preparation…

As is customary after a summer of major tournaments, various international managerial jobs are now vacant.

As is customary, the rumour mill has gone into overdrive.

As is customary, there doesn’t appear to be any common theme across the names linked to major jobs.

Take the England job. According to the bookmakers’ odds, the four most likely names are Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Lee Carsley and Mauricio Pochettino. Two are homegrown managers who have performed solidly at club level. One is the current England Under-21 manager, who has limited club-coaching experience. The other is a foreign manager — albeit one with considerable experience in English football — who has coached major clubs.

The apparent contenders for the United States men’s national team job are equally varied. There is a raft of MLS candidates — Jim Curtin, Steve Cherundolo, Wilfried Nancy. Then there is David Wagner, a former U.S. international who hasn’t coached in the country. There is Herve Renard, an international specialist currently coaching the France women’s side at the Olympics. There’s also Thierry Henry, who is doing the equivalent with the France men’s side, and…

The French Football Federation (FFF) says Chelsea have recalled Lesley Ugochukwu from his participation with the France Olympic squad.

Ugochukwu was named in Thierry Henry’s preliminary selection for the under-23 tournament in his home country in June but missed out on a place in the condensed 18-man squad earlier this month.

However, Olympic football rules allow teams to take up to four replacements that can come in for any injured players in the initial selection at any time during the tournament, and then return to replacement status if the player returns to fitness. U.S. women’s head coach Emma Hayes said last week she sees it as a 22-player squad. As the Olympics is not a tournament within a FIFA window, club sides are allowed to block their players from participating.

Ugochukwu joined Chelsea from Rennes for around £23.5million ($30.3m) last summer. The 19-year-old featured regularly as a rotation option in the first half of the season but suffered a hamstring injury that saw him miss most of the second half of the campaign, ending with 15 appearances across competitions.

The Athletic reported earlier this month that Chelsea were reviewing loan options for Ugochukwu, with the club’s priority that the midfielder spends the season at another Premier League team….

Aston Villa midfielder Boubacar Kamara is out for the remainder of the season after suffering a suspected anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.

The 24-year-old sustained the injury to his right knee during the 2-1 Premier League defeat to Manchester United on Sunday, being replaced in the 65th minute by Moussa Diaby.

Further scans are planned but the France international is now likely to miss the European Championships this summer with a five to six month lay-off the expectation.

Surgery is expected to follow soon after confirmation of the nature of the injury.

GO DEEPER

ACL injuries are a risk for male and female footballers but so much is still unknown

Kamara, who joined Villa from Marseille on a free transfer in the summer of  2022, suffered a knee ligament injury in September 2022. The issue saw him miss nine games for club and country.

Kamara’s injury is the third ACL sustained by a Villa player in recent months after Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Buendia both picked up the same injury earlier in the season.

Defender Diego Carlos required surgery after tearing his Achilles during his second game for the club in August 2022.

Kamara’s teammate Ezri Konsa has a knee injury of his own which Unai Emery expects to keep him out for around a month.

“Ezri is injured,” Emery said of…

European football is closed for winter. The stadiums are empty and the training pitches are dusted with snow. But in northern France, with a tactics board over his shoulder and red and blue counters plotting his next move, Lille head coach Paulo Fonseca is ready for the game to return.

And why not? Fonseca, 50, is in his second season at Lille (LOSC) and his side are playing some of the most watchable attacking football in Ligue 1. LOSC were fifth at the turn of the year, spent almost three months unbeaten, and have qualified for the knockout stages of the Europa Conference League. They have defeated Monaco. They held Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain.

This is the fourth country in which Fonseca has coached. After leaving Portugal in 2016, he restored Shakhtar Donetsk to the top of Ukrainian football, building a team admired across Europe, before then experiencing the crosswinds of life at Roma. One good season, one less so. After leaving Italy, he was ensnared by Tottenham’s chaotic coaching search during the summer of 2021. The following year, Fonseca, his wife, Katerina, and their young child fled Kyiv in the early hours of a February morning, escaping the Ukrainian capital as Russian bombing devastated the city.

Then in 2022, he arrived in Lille. They had won the Ligue 1…

With a record-breaking World Cup, the Women’s Super League breaking away from the FA and drama in qualifying for the Olympics, 2023 was a big year for women’s football. 

But will 2024 top it? What can we expect from another summer tournament this year? And what will happen now that the WSL and Women’s Championship (WC) are about to change?

GO DEEPER

Team GB, the 2024 Olympics and why failing to qualify matters

The Athletic’s Charlotte Harpur, Michael Cox and Chloe Morgan spoke with Sophie Penney about their 2024 moments to look out for on our dedicated women’s football podcast, Full Time Europe.

Listen in full to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or read the edited conversation below…

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Sophie Penney: There were a lot of moments in 2023 that will have repercussions for 2024, including the Women’s Nations League (WNL) games, which are acting as qualifiers for the Olympics.

Charlotte Harpur: I’m looking forward to seeing France compete at the Paris Olympics but things will be really tough for them. They’ve topped their WNL group comprising of Austria, Norway and Portugal, with five wins and a draw. They play Germany in the WNL semi-finals on February 23 and that will be their biggest test so far.

When manager Herve Renard was appointed, he and the…

It’s been a wild, wonderful and empowering year for women’s football.

From fighting federations to moments of World Cup magic, we’ve seen it all.

It’s hard to pinpoint just one standout moment of the year, but we asked our women’s football experts to do just that…

The Athletic’s Charlotte Harpur, Michael Cox and Chloe Morgan spoke to Sophie Penney about their personal highlights of the year on our dedicated women’s football podcast Full Time Europe. Steph Yang, Laia Cervello Herrero, Meg Linehan, Katie Whyatt and Melanie Anzidei also provide their thoughts.

Listen in full to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or read the edited conversation below…

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Sophie Penney: What was your moment of 2023?

Charlotte Harpur: When France captain Wendie Renard announced in February that she would no longer be available for national-team selection. This indirectly led to manager at the time Corinne Diacre’s departure.

The French Football Federation said the fracture between the players and the hierarchy seemed irreversible and it was detrimental to the interests of the national team. 

GO DEEPER

France in crisis: Player walkouts, manager on the brink – this is what is really going on

Via her lawyer, Diacre claimed she had been the subject of a smear campaign ‘which…

After moving back to Paris Saint-Germain from Spain in the summer of 2021, midfielders Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo had lots in common.

Both France internationals, they followed the same Muslim faith, stayed in the same hotel in their first few weeks at the Paris club and shared a summer holiday to Tanzania. They were also in the same place at the same time when a brutal attack occurred in Chatou, west of Paris, on November 4, 2021.

On that day, two years ago, the footballers’ lives took very different paths.

On the journey back home from a team dinner, Hamraoui and Diallo were stopped by two masked men. One hit Hamraoui with an iron bar, targeting her legs, and the other held Diallo to the steering wheel.

Reports soon emerged that Diallo was linked to the attack so she could take Hamraoui’s place in the PSG team.

In September 2022, 10 months on, Diallo and five men were arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. According to a police report, Diallo instigated the attack on Hamraoui, her motive being “violent jealousy”.

One man admitted to beating up Hamraoui and another is suspected of pinning Diallo to the steering wheel. The men…

Welcome to The Athletic Mini, a short format you will see in the coming weeks on some of our soccer coverage. 

On November 4 2021, on the way home from a Paris Saint-Germain team dinner, Kheira Hamraoui and Aminata Diallo were stopped by two masked men. One hit Hamraoui with an iron bar, targeting her legs, and the other held Diallo to the steering wheel.

Ten months on, Diallo and five men were arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy. According to a police report, Diallo instigated the attack on Hamraoui, her motive being “violent jealousy”. Diallo, now playing for Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia (employers of Cristiano Ronaldo), has always maintained she is innocent.

The Athletic’s Charlotte Harpur has spoken to those close to PSG, the players’ lawyers and the public prosecutor to unpick the tangled web of what has happened to the former PSG team-mates in the last two years.

Hamraoui, who joined Club America in Mexico in September, has written a book and is filming a documentary and it’s little surprise: this extraordinary web of claim and counter-claim has had ramifications far beyond PSG’s women’s team.

Have a read of Charlotte’s report but, if you don’t have time, here are the key things you should know:

• A leaked…