Reasons behind Helena Costa's decision to resign as Clermont's manager

Helena Costa said on June 24, 2014 that she had decided against taking up the coaching position at French side Clermont for 'purely personal' reasons.

The news Helena Costa resigning as Ligue 2 team Clermont’s manager was somewhat of a shock to football supporters all around France as it was announced that she was let go without even taking charge of a single match.

Although no official reasons were mentioned, one of the major reasons could be her appointment being treated as a joke because she was a women.

For a woman who would have went on to become the first female manager to take charge of a French professional men’s team after coming from a hard Portuguese neighbourhood, comments such as these could have been hurting.

Claude Michy, the club’s president partially blamed it on her being a woman, claiming the decision to be a surprise.

“She’s a woman so it could be down to any number of things,” Michy was quoted by the Guardian. “It’s an astonishing, irrational and incomprehensible decision. She’s developed a confidence problem, but I don’t know what it was that caused this. She told me quite simply: ‘I’m going,’ and we didn’t succeed in making her change her mind. She’s taking her secret with her.”

Another reason could have been the lack of support from fans that Costa received as most of the supporters were unsure whether a woman could take charge of a men’s professional team.

In a series a statement she released after submitting her resignation, Costa stated that it could have been “a sequence of events which no coach would allow as they revealed a total lack of respect as well as total amateurism.”

The 36-year-old accused the club’s sporting director of not responding to her emails, and went on to sign players without her consent.

"For any leader in an organisation who is responsible for a team, it's unacceptable. I only made my decision yesterday after discussing it with the president,” she told reporters. “Before this decision, I did all my work. I hope this won’t cause prejudice towards women in the sport. I want to be viewed as a coach.”

Costa had agreed to become Clermont’s manager last month, and had she taken the job, she would have become only the second woman after Caroline Morace, who managed Italian club Viterbese, to manage a men’s team.