La difficile émergence de la profession d'Entraîneur de football en france (1890-1950)

Abstract

Being a football trainer didn't become a real occupation in France till the end of the 1940's. This delay was due to various elements: the players, who considered that practising a sport did not mean they should be forced to attend practice, the club managers, who preferred to resort to enticing players away from other clubs rather than hire a real specialist, and the democratic political authorities, which did not favour professionalism. The fact that the team captain was a role model also delayed the creation of the position. But support from the press and from former players finally led to the first hirings. This was further reinforced in 1929, when official courses were created, then in 1942, when national qualifications were introduced, mainly to train French nationals to hold executive positions, and to improve French football. With this institutional recognition, trainers now bore the full weight of ever-increasing responsibilities, all the more so as they were getting more and more coverage in news- papers whose attention had up till then been focused mainly on players.