It didn't take long for the debate to begin. Can a woman manage a men's football team? Sky Sports was posing that question just hours after the announcement that Helena Costa is to become the most high-profile female manager in European football history when she takes charge of French Ligue 2 club Clermont Foot next season.

The thing is, if you're having to ask the question, you probably have an inkling as to your answer. While Fifa president Sepp Blatter has congratulated Costa, and the football world celebrates another progressive step forward, what are we actually debating? Are we analysing whether Costa is a good manager, in footballing terms? Or are we asking whether Costa will be allowed to flourish in a men's team environment? Because there is a difference.

As Fifa executive committee member Moya Dodd – another football first on her appointment last year – told Fairfax Media: "A good coach is a good teacher, a good people manager, a good communicator, a good tactician, and a good leader. Women are good at all of those things."

Already, 36-year-old Costa's appointment has been scrutinised from every possible angle. While it seems football is quite accepting of appointing men as managers with no qualifications and little coaching experience, a woman's CV tends to be pored over and minutely analysed. In Costa's case the conclusions have lurched wildly from triumph – she trained under Jose Mourinho at Benfica and Chelsea, she's "Mourinho in a skirt!" – to disaster – a story about the Iran women's team fielding male players under her charge. "She's already managed men …" read the Twitter trail for one tabloid story.

Costa says it has been her lifelong ambition to coach at the highest level. Certainly she has a full and impressive portfolio, scouting for Celtic, and managing the Benfica youth teams to world titles. But taking on a dressing room of grown men – and a football club filled with the usual power politics – will bring its own specific set of challenges.

As reported in L'Equipe, the response of the Clermont players has been revealing. Among the more refreshing comments there was also a glimpse of how the players may discuss the appointment behind closed doors. Left-back Emmanuel Imorou admitted that the team had asked questions among themselves: could a woman be authoritative? And that they couldn't resist Googling Costa to see if she was pretty. Meanwhile, goalkeeper Fabien Farnolle noted: "It is a media coup for the club, everyone will talk about Clermont, the president is clever."

Women who coach men's football teams do exist: last year in Croatia Tihana Nemcic took charge of men's fifth division side NK Viktorija Vojakovac. More significantly was the pioneer Carolina Morace, who made headlines when she was employed as manager of Italian Serie C side Viterbo in 1999. It's just that usually the teams aren't high profile enough to warrant global coverage.

But speak to those women, privately, and they might share with you some of the obstacles they face. From the rank sexism embedded in football club politics, to how to behave on a night of team bonding; from how to be a confidante to your team without generating rumours that you are sleeping with any of them (as ridiculous as that sounds), to overcoming that one bloodyminded player who just doesn't want to be coached by a woman. Above all, they told me, never give your players any reason to see you as anything other than their manager.

Because let's face it, the issue here isn't football. It is everything outside of it. Forget the on-field tactics, you need to be a tactician of the highest order to survive the off-field play. When Costa walks out for her very first press conference at Clermont, she will no doubt face questions that no male manager ever faces. Questions about nudity in the dressing room, about whether a woman can assert her authority over a group of men, maybe even – as Karren Brady was asked on her appointment as managing director of Birmingham City in 1993 – her vital statistics.

By virtue of her appointment, Costa has already become a female icon – before she's even written out a team sheet. But for her to survive a season in charge, for her to achieve a sustained managerial career in men's football, never mind a legacy for the next wave of women who attempt to navigate this treacherous path, this much is certain: Costa will need solid backroom staff around her, bulletproof skin, and a seriously savvy media adviser.

Of course, in a just world Costa would only ever be expected to prove her football credentials, nothing more. So let's all raise our own expectations and hope that football is ready to give her a genuine chance at the job. If that can happen then we've really got something to celebrate.