Football’s pioneers: women who have managed men’s teams in Europe

For all the progress football has had in recent years, it has somehow taken until 2023 for the first woman to lead a professional English men’s team.

“I am the first and it’s great but I don’t want to be the first and the only,” said Hannah Dingley after the announcement of her appointment at Forest Green Rovers earlier this week.

Dingley looks forward to a time when such appointments not treated as remarkable. In other European countries such as Italy and France, more headway has already been made on that score.

Helena Costa

When she took the helm at second-division club Clermont Foot 63 in 2014, Helena Costa became the first woman to manage a professional men’s football team in France.

It had appeared to be a huge step for women in football until Costa – who is Portuguese and was nicknamed “Mourinho in a skirt” after a period at Chelsea when José Mourinho was manager – walked out of her job the following month, claiming she was sidelined by male colleagues and was just a “face” to attract publicity.

In response, the club’s president, Claude Michy, said: “She’s a woman so it could be down to any number of things … it’s an astonishing, irrational and incomprehensible decision.”

Costa previously managed the women’s national teams of Iran and Qatar, coached Benefica’s male youth teams and was a talent spotter for the Scottish Premiership side Celtic. She is now at Watford as head of scouting.

Corinne Diacre

As a player, Corinne Diacre won more than a century of caps – many as captain of France. In 2014, she was named manager of Clermont Foot 63, following Costa’s resignation, before coaching France in the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

In managing a men’s team, Diacre however, did not embrace the role of a glass-ceiling breaker. The pioneering football coach just wanted to get on with the job and be treated like any other manager.

In 2018, she told The Guardian: “In doing all my coaching studies and badges, I have never, ever, had any training module that says: ‘If it’s women this is how you coach, and if it’s men that is how you coach.’ We are talking about football. Obviously, men and women have specific characteristics but the only real difference is physical, athletic.”

In 2023, she was sacked from the national team after her “fraught” tenure divided players and management over complaints about the team’s culture. She dismissed the alleged problems as “slander” and “dishonesty”.

Carolina Morace

One of Italy’s most famous players of women’s football, former player and coach Carolina Morace was Europe’s only previous female coach of a men’s professional team before Costa’s appointment at Clermont Foot 63 in 2014.

On the pitch, she was a top scorer for 12 seasons in Serie A and garnered 105 goals in 150 caps for Italy. Morace later became a television commentator and the first woman to coach a men’s professional team when she managed Serie C club Viterbese in 1999. She subsequently coached three national women’s sides: Italy, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago.

In 2018, Morace applied to lead England women’s team, later heavily criticising the Football Association’s decision to place Phil Neville in charge and contesting their assertion that there was a severe lack of suitably qualified female candidates.

“I am so frustrated,” she said in 2018. “I don’t understand why the FA are saying that no woman who was good enough wanted the job.”