Corinne Diacre and Yuen Ting Chan paired as part of FIFA Coach Mentorship Programme

Initiative aimed at developing women’s football

Partnerships place young female coaches with their more experienced counterparts

While it is routine to find men coaching women’s teams, the opposite is a lot less common. However, that is precisely the common denominator shared by Corinne Diacre and Yuen Ting Chan, one of the pairings of the FIFA Coach Mentorship Programme launched in October 2018.

Chan hit the headlines in 2015 after taking charge of Hong Kong’s Eastern Sports Club and then leading them to the Premier League title that season. In so doing she became the first woman to coach a men’s top-flight team. Current Bleues coach Diacre had blazed a trail a year earlier by taking up the reins at the men’s team of French Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot, where she was in charge from 2014 to 2017.

Last December, the latter found time between two national team get-togethers to pay Yuen Ting Chan a visit in Hong Kong. “It’s a complete change of scenery,” the France coach said with a smile from the large sampan in which she was given a boat tour of the city. “I know it’ll do my head a world of good,” she added in reference to the particularly intense build-up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019™ that she is experiencing.