The mastermind behind Dijon FCO's rapid rise
Sylvain Carric is no stranger to taking a plucky underdog to the top end of French football, and the Dijon FCO Head of Women's Football discusses the team's historic top four finish with WFC...
Dijon FCO have just secured a top four finish in the Première Ligue, the top division of French women’s football, for the first time in their history. And, with it, earned an opportunity to fight for the overall title, alongside France’s elite trio of Olympique Lyonnais, Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC.
The odds will be heavily stacked against a side battling relegation only a few years ago, with a men’s team currently languishing in the lower leagues, against the might of France’s crème de la crème in Lyon, plus the two Parisian heavy hitters.
But in reality, that all matters little, because for Dijon to be here at all is an outstanding achievement, yet one the man at the head of it all has already masterminded once before.
Sylvain Carric, the club’s Head of Women’s Football, previously led player recruitment at another of France’s perennial overachievers in FC Fleury 91. He firstly guided the team to promotion from the second division as FCF Val d’Orge, before attaching to Fleury and overseeing a steady rise up the table across multiple season, culminating in a top-four finish come the end of the 2021/22 season.
Carric’s success saw him targeted by Dijon in the summer of 2022 for a more senior Head of Women’s Football role, as the Club sought to develop the professionalisation of their women’s section. After fighting to stay in the top division for much of the 2022/23 season, the Cote-d’Or side would eventually finish 10th but in just two years has gone from battling relegation to reaching the league’s championship play-offs.
“This season for us has been an amazing season,” says Carric, speaking before the 0-0 draw against Montpellier HSC, which combined with Fleury’s loss to Paris FC would confirm Dijon’s place in the top four.
“It’s the first time for Dijon and with two games to go we were still fighting for the Champions League, so it’s an amazing season for us, our project, and our work.”
Check out over 100 more unique stories in WFC’s Premium section, available for just £45 for 12 months, paid in one go, or a £6 a month rolling subscription.
All subscriptions come with a 7-day free trial to allow you to explore our full archive.
Plus, guarantee you everything that is to come over the next 12 months…
So, what’s changed?
Behind the scenes, plenty. Dijon ranks eighth in the league for average player salaries, so are very much punching above their respective weight, but have invested smartly away from the pitch in both facilities and recruitment.
A new state-of-the-art training ground was opened in 2022 in which the women’s team have a dedicated section, while they were one of just six teams (alongside the French elite of Lyon, PSG, Paris FC, Fleury and Montpellier) to open a bespoke women’s academy section last summer, which currently includes eight players across various youth national teams.
The recruitment has been smart too, with an emphasis on bringing in foreign players from developing countries, such as Denmark, Poland, New Zealand, China and many others.
“It is a lot of work, but we need to know what is the advantage for our club if we compare to other clubs in the league?
“We needed to develop firstly the staff, that’s very important because when I signed here three years ago, it was not a very professional set up, I had only a head coach. I didn’t have a goalkeeper coach, I didn’t have an assistant coach, I didn’t have a physio, I didn’t have a strength and conditioning coach.
“So, I had to recruit very good staff - and also staff with experience in the women’s game, which is very important. After that, for sure the most important thing was to develop the team and the players. When I arrived, the level of the team was not competitive. Now, after two summers we have changed around 85% of the team and we work with young players because as you mentioned our budget is one of the lowest.”
Carric, previously an assistant coach himself for eight years at Val d’Orge/Fleury before stepping into his recruitment role behind the scenes, earned his UEFA A Licence in 2019, so is well-versed himself into where the best young talent is, and set about bringing them to Dijon.
Across the past couple of years, some established names have represented the club, such as Danish duo Stine Larsen and Rikke Sevecke, as well as Sweden’s Julia Spetsmark and Michelle De Jong.
Currently, the multi-national element stretches to Finnish goalkeeper Katriina Talaslahti, USA’s Tegan McGrady, Austrian forward Viktoria Pinther, Chinese duo Wang Yanwen and Wu Chengshu, plus New Zealand’s Kate Taylor, among others.
Closer to home, Lena Goetsch and Alice Pinguet are France Under 23 internationals, while Lina Gay is a regular for the Under 19s.
“We search for very good young players in France in both the first and second divisions,” admits Carric. “But we look abroad to find very good young talent and now the team is made up of half French players and half foreign players, bringing very good energy to the team with this nice mix., I think we have nine or ten different nationalities in the first team squad now.”
Continuing, Carric admits he “doesn’t have a scouting team”, meaning he does a lot of the recruitment himself, in conjunction with head coach Sebastien Joseph.
“I’m alone!” he laughs. “I don’t have the budget yet to develop this part of the club, so I watch a lot of games, all the time, every day., I watch a lot of games in Scandinavia, in Europe, in Asia, in the USA, everywhere.
“I use Wyscout, I travel around France to look for players, it’s very important for me to see them play in person because I need to also understand the mentality of the player, how the player works in a team or, if they’re in the youth national teams, both during the game but also during training sessions and even in the warm-up.
“For me, the mentality is very, very important, especially if they are coming from abroad and will need to adapt to the French level and also the French lifestyle. So, I try to travel and find the best players both on the pitch and off the pitch because it’s very important for us to have a great atmosphere in the group. But yes, I work alone, so it’s a lot of work!”
While his previous work at Fleury, a Club he grew with over a decade, suggests Carric’s success at Dijon is not a mere coincidence, I’m intrigued to see if he adapted his processes coming into a new job with a fresh start, or did he turn to tried and tested methods?
“I use the same process. It’s my process so I do the same things, but the difference between here and Fleury is it’s two different clubs. In Fleury, I had a bigger budget and if I compare that to Dijon, that was top four in budget behind the big three, whereas here we have a bottom half budget., but what we have here is top-quality facilities.”
On the new training centre, he adds, “It is so beautiful! We also play every game in our main stadium (which is shared with the men’s team) so when I recruit, I try to show them it is a good project for the player. When you come into Dijon…how do you say it? It’s not just to play, it’s for the club, for the city, for the facilities, for the staff.
“I try to develop everything; it is not just about on the pitch. In Dijon, we have very good facilities and a very good stadium. So, for sporting development, it’s easier than Fleury. The process is the same, but I adapted to the project.”
With a low budget, Carric at first prioritised building his staff, going as far as using buses to get around the country rather than the national trains used at FC Fleury 91, to ensure money was saved to pay staff and players a fair wage.
“The most important thing is to give the budget to the players so we can sign very good players and also very good young players. It’s important to me, it’s a priority to use the budget to build the staff and also the playing squad.”
Dijon’s qualification for the end-of-season play-offs comes at an interesting time, because this is the first season since the top two divisions of the French women’s game were professionalised, with a whole range of changes across the board to ensure France continues to keep up with some of its European rivals, and clubs like Lyon and PSG can continue to both win and challenge for the Champions League.
But with bigger clubs lurking in both the top division and ready for promotion from the second division, such as RC Lens and Marseille, is there a concern this might be one of the last times we see a club such as Dijon, able to mix it with the bigger teams, throwing out comparisons to England and clubs such as Birmingham City and Reading, who used to finish in the top four of the Women’s Super League.
Relevant Read
Vice President Andreea Koenig discusses the new French professional league
If you’re not a follower of French domestic football, you may have missed the news that in the summer just passed, the league previously known as Division 1 became the Premiere Ligue, with Arkema remaining as a primary sponsor. Divison 2 has also been re-branded as the Seconde Ligue.
“Yes, for sure,” he admits, when asked if it’s a concern. “For the moment it’s hard for us because we are a professional club, but we are no longer a big club on the men’s side, so it’s difficult and for me we have two or three big areas to think about.
“The first is the development of the professional league and with this development we earn more money because we have access to new contracts with sponsors now, for example for things like GPS, so with the professional league we can develop our project even further. But for the future of women’s football, we have two solutions.”
He continues, “The first is to see the arrival of a big club like Marseille, who has a big men’s club with a big budget. The second solution is to find owners just for the women’s game and to develop the business model of the women’s teams.
“We’re speaking with a lot of potential owners, to try and find a new partner for the women’s section, which would allow us to continue developing our project and competing to finish in the top four or five every season.”
It does mean the club’s academy could be key to any future success, with Dijon currently developing multiple players across various youth national teams.
Safe in the knowledge Lyon, PSG and Paris FC above them all have sizeable budgets and may well soon be sniffing around some of the club’s prized young talent, selling players on for lucrative fees could become a profit centre for the club in the coming years.
“For sure. We opened the academy and it’s very important in our project because we don’t have a lot of money, so to go out and recruit the top players is not easy. The solution is to develop the young players in the academy and for them to progress into the first team.
“But in my opinion, if we don’t find a new owner, one day we won’t stay in the top division. The academy is ok for one, two, three years, but if we don’t find the new owner to develop the club further, it will be so difficult for us to stay in the top five and even in the first division.”
It’s a stark remark given the club’s current position, but shows there is a concern the top division may go the way of the WSL, where the aforementioned Birmingham City are in the second division and Reading suffered even further, financial ruin dropping the team all the way down to the fifth tier, with the club now running on an amateur basis, left behind by the financial powertrain the WSL has quickly become.
“We try to develop everything without money, and we will continue to try and develop,” Carric states. “But when we see the development everywhere in Europe and in the NWSL, in England, in Spain, in Germany, when you look at the clubs in our position in the league, it’s Manchester United or Manchester City in England, it’s Atletico Madrid in Spain, it’s Inter or AC Milan in Italy, it is always a big club, so for us it’s amazing to be in this position, but for the future we need more, we need a new solution to compete.”
Carric is however generally happy with the development of French women’s football at the moment, pointing to coaches going abroad, such as Jocelyn Precheur, Amandine Miquel and Sonia Bompastor, all now coaching in England, the latter close to sealing a debut WSL title with Chelsea.
“Every year in the French league, we see the best players do stay here because Lyon and PSG are big clubs to be at, but further down the league it is harder for teams to keep hold of people.
“For Amandine, I’m sure she’s happy in Leicester now because she works in a very professional setup at a club with big motivations to develop women’s football. In France, some clubs don’t have the same motivation, so it’s difficult for a few clubs in the league. So, I understand the players, the coaches, even the sporting directors like me, who look elsewhere.
“When these people want to try and go abroad, I see it as normal because when I watch the English league you always have people in the stadiums, you have good facilities, you have big marketing projects and in France right now we are behind on this part of the game.”
It begs the question, what next for Carric? And could we see him follow his compatriots and take what is clearly a successful set of processes to England himself, or elsewhere in the sport?
“Yes, for sure. For me, I’ve worked in the French league for 15 years and I know it very well. I would like to try a new league and try something different.
“I need to develop my English, of course, but I think it’s a good opportunit for anybody to experience a new culture, a new system, a new football., a new life.”
But, for now, the focus remains firmly on the challenge at hand - a warm-up in the league’s final gameday vs. Paris FC, before Dijon set their sights on delivering what would be the pièce de résistance of Carric’s career, the ultimate upset of perennial champions Lyon.