Portuguese soccer manager Helena Costa is set to make history this summer.
The 36-year-old former manager of Iran and Qatar’s national women’s soccer teams has been named the manager of Clermont Foot 63, in France's Ligue 2. Costa will become the first woman to manage a team in one of the top two divisions of the top European leagues.
Costa has plenty of experience managing and developing players- she coached the Benfica youth team in her native Portugal for 12 years. She has also worked as a scout for Celtic F.C. in Scotland and managed at the lower league levels in Portugal. While Clermont does have two games remaining, Costa will not take over for current manager Regis Brouard until the end of the season.
There were both positive and negative reactions. Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, congratulated her on twitter:
Congratulations and good luck to Helena Costa @ClermontFoot. Great news for women in football today. http://t.co/463MivEL9I
— Joseph S Blatter (@SeppBlatter) May 7, 2014
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told Arsenal.com: “There are men managing women, why should women not manage men?”
Wenger also added: “The only thing I was always a big defender in my life is to defend competence. If you are competent, you get the job anywhere.”
There was also the reaction Clermont’s players, such as Emmanuel Imorou. He told the French newspaper L’Equipe: “Honestly, it was cool. There was no big skepticism. We made some jokes. We wondered how she was going to handle a group of men, if she was going to be able to impose her authority.”
While Costa is the first female manager at that level, she is by no means the first female manager of men’s teams in soccer. However, the most high-profile hire, Carolina Morace in 1999 by Viterbo in Italy’s Serie C, ended in disappointment as she lasted just two games in the role.
Costa will have a difficult task ahead of her. In addition to the added media scrutiny she is likely to receive, which Anna Kessel points out well, there’s also the on-the-field product and talent at Clermont, which isn’t exactly the strongest. Clermont is currently 14th out of 20 teams in Ligue 2 with two games remaining. It will be the second straight bottom half finish after the side was top half of the table four of its first five years back in Ligue 2, prompting the change in manager.