⚽️0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣ Arianna Criscione
Meet Arianna Criscione, a football industry professional and former pro player advancing women’s football on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born February 18, 1985, in Whittier, California, Criscione watched wistfully as her older sister started to play football. “I wanted to be just like her,” Criscione said. At age eight she enrolled in the region’s American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), a youth football system designed to let kids fall in love with playing the game. She built a passion for football as she grew older and progressed up the youth club ladder. Criscione played NCAA D1 football at UCLA, then with Boston College, where she teamed up with fellow BC Eagle Laura Georges (who helped the goalkeeper with her Italian homework), starting in the net for all 21 games during the 2005 season and eight during the 2006 season before being sidelined by injury.
After graduation, Criscione embarked on a professional playing career in Europe. After several seasons in Italy, where she won three championship titles and the Coppa Italia, then playing time in the Netherlands, she arrived in France to play with Saint-Étienne (2015-16). Following an injury, and playing time in Sweden, Criscione returned to the hexagone in 2017, spent one season with Saint Malo, then signed with Paris Saint-Germain, where she ended her on-pitch career in 2021. While at PSG, she began her post-playing career, serving as the club’s Sponsorship Manager, and today serves as Director of Women’s Football at N3XT Sports.
Arianna’s Story
In Saint-Étienne, Criscione fell in love: with the city, with its football, and with its fans. “Saint-Étienne was probably the most accommodating, nicest people I’ve ever encountered or met culturally,” she said of her time in the former mining city. Although she blew out her knee a month after arrival, and thus spent much of her time on crutches, Saint-Étienne is where Criscione first began to understand the ways that some French cities rallied around their football clubs.
“The stadium is amazing, and going to the men’s games [is something else]. When people find out that you play for Saint-Étienne, they’re even nicer. They just want to talk with you because they love the club so much. It was a really cool experience to play for a city that loves their football.”
Saint Malo was a stark contrast. For starters, it was a second division club (Saint-Étienne was first division, known since 2019 as D1 Arkema), thus the level of play was incomparable. Moreover, differences with teammates created a chasm.
Photo: Arianna Criscione
Photo: Arianna Criscione
A return to D1 with PSG in 2019 provided yet another unique experience in French culture and football. As a global club, half of Criscione’s new teammates were international, thus it served as a mini melting pot of different cultures. “That was fun,” she recalled, “and an amazing experience.” It also highlighted how living, training, and working in the nation’s capital was vastly different from that in Brittany (Saint-Malo) or the Loire (Saint-Étienne). “Those three clubs, though very French, were all very different from each other culturally, and the way that people treated us was completely different, too,” she said of the learning experience.
Part of that was due to the differences in the three regions’ geography and demographics. But the evolving role of and regard towards women’s football was another contributing factor.
“Women’s football has changed,” Criscione said.
“When I first arrived, they didn’t realize that women could play football or that women do play football. And now, especially in France, it’s common to see football players. There’s greater visibility: it’s broadcast on free-to-air TV, you see billboards, and you know who some of the French national team players are. This is definitely developing and empowering women in the country. The fact that I play or work in football is less weird now.”
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Criscione obtained Italian citizenship and engaged in formal sports diplomacy when she played for the Azzurre national team (2011-14). But her professional career in France provided ample opportunity for her to conduct informal sports diplomacy on a daily basis communicating, representing, and negotiating foreign attitudes and assumptions about the United States, its culture, and citizens.
“I’m very proud to be American,” she said.
“But I think people get it wrong. They think that Americans think they’re better because [we’re] more vocal and culturally very different when it comes to speaking up and telling people what we want or what we do or do not like. But I don’t think that’s the reality. We believe our loud voice does not dim others. And we believe in opportunity for all, which means the cake gets bigger for everyone.”
Correcting those misperceptions is something she tries to do as an American living abroad. Criscione also tries to reframe assumptions that the United States is uniform in its culture and language. “Even in France, a lot of people forget how big the United States is,” she observed. “So, it's normal that we have different cultures or languages.”
Conversations about food in the United States versus France also serve as conduits of cultural diplomacy. “An argument is that our food is fake in the supermarket because it is all the same size or these bright colors,” she noted. “Those always become funny conversations.” And she sets the record straight on stereotypes that Americans eat McDonalds consistently (they don’t).
Criscione is also a sports ambassador, representing women in football and what female leadership can look like.
“It’s showing what women can do,” she said. “Just showing other girls in France that they can play football and then they can have a great career after football, that you don’t have to all follow the exact same path.”
The California native enjoys these conversations, sharing how different experiences shaped her path. She also seeks out opportunities to ask people why they do (or don’t) do certain things. “Learning from them as much as I hope I give to them,” she said, is part of the larger process and enrichment of living overseas.
Photo: Arianna Criscione
“Culturally, the experience of playing abroad and trying to communicate with my teammates makes it easier to communicate now and engage in my work,” she said of how her on-pitch career translates to her current professional pathway. She denotes that every single day is a cultural exchange through football as her financé is French and works in men’s football. The two thus have many conversations about the game.
“We don’t see eye to eye on everything by any means,” Criscione said. “But I’ve created the best diplomat [of women’s football] as he goes into his locker room on a regular basis and brings up the topic of women’s football with all of his professional players. And he flies the flag and supports us in the men’s locker room.” Voilà, another illustration of how the acts of diplomacy can help influence attitudes towards women’s sports.
“My whole life has been shaped by the football field,” reflected Criscione.
“Most football players say its shaped who you are as a person, it’s helped you with competence, it allows you to build the character that you have resilience, creativity, and wearing a lot of hats–understanding that you have to do a lot of roles in that if you’re going to develop football (women’s or otherwise, you’re going to have to do a lot of things. So, it’s definitely helped me to better understand French culture.”
Mapping the Connection
From Whittier, California to Rennes, France
Further Reading/Resources
[E] Interview with the author, July 7, 2022.
[E] Arianna Criscione, “Are You With Me?” LinkedIn
[E] “Arianna Criscione: The Disney story that led to a dual role at PSG,” FIFA.com, March 6, 2021.
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “The Upfront Legacies of France 2019: Changing the face of ‘le foot féminin,’” Sport in History, Vol 39, September 2019.
How to Cite This Entry
Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Arianna Criscione,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/024-arianna-criscione. (date of consultation).