⚽0️⃣3️⃣5️⃣ Camille Abily
Meet Camille Abily, a soccer warrior who, after an international and professional playing career, is writing a new chapter as Assistant Coach at her former team Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, the world’s most dominant professional club.
“I think that my generation and I have helped to develop women’s football and also to open people’s minds a little, in particular through my experiences, with OL and with the France team.”
Camille’s Story
Born December 5, 1984, Abily grew up just outside the Breton capital of Rennes, a region of France known for its cider, seafood, and Celtic cultural connections. She began to play football as a young girl with local youth clubs, excelled, then was recruited into the youth development program at Clairefontaine, 26 miles southwest of Paris, the heart of elite football in France. From 2001 until 2005, she trained with French Football Federation (FFF) technicians while she completed her schooling and met some of the country’s most illustrious football stars, like Zinédine Zidane. Abily signed with Montpellier, where in 2001 owner Louis Nicollin created the first women’s professional team in France, then played with OL Féminin (2006 to 2009) before a short career in the United States with Los Angeles Sol (2009) and FC Gold Pride (2010) in the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS). From 2010 until her 2018 retirement from the professional game, Abily was part of the winning formula at OL Féminin.
The Sports Diplomacy Connection
Through Abily’s 16-year tenure en bleue, she was a formal representative of France on-pitch at 183 international matches, including at the London 2012 Olympic Games, before her national team retirement after Euro2017.
But it’s at the professional club level where the story gets more interesting. Although she regularly interacted with international teammates at OL Féminin (and still does as Assistant Coach), Abily’s U.S. career provides greater context of what informal sports diplomacy can look like.
“I decided to follow my career in the United States because, at the time in 2009, women’s football in France was not professional,” Abily said. “It was really a dream for me to go to the United States. It was the championship and the nation the most important [for women’s football] in the world.”
She was proud to be drafted by Los Angeles. But she also wanted to play with and against some of the world’s best players, Olympic and FIFA World Cup champions who were concentrated in the inaugural American league. Brazilian legend and fellow Sol teammate Marta was a particular draw for the Frenchwoman. In March 2009, Abily played in the WPS’s inaugural match against the Washington Spirit, which fielded fellow French international Sonia Bompastor (current OL Féminin Head Coach).
The entire season was one of firsts, which began with Abily’s arrival in the United States.
“When I arrived for my visa, and at the airport, and said that I was a professional player, for them [Americans] it was normal and it was exceptional, whereas in France it didn’t exist. When I said I played football, everyone looked at me a little weird.”
That’s because women’s football long faced negative stereotypes and social taboos in France, even as the country was one of the game’s early pioneers. The French team captain co-created the world’s first viral football moment in 1920 when she kissed her English counterpart at midfield before a friendly match. Cultural attitudes began to shift in the late 1960s…but not rapidly enough.
Thus when Abily arrived in the United States, it was a seachange of how the game and its players were perceived and received. “At the mental level, that immediately sets the tone,” she recalled.
“It was quite impressive, at the cultural level too, the place of little girls in the parks, in particular. I saw a lot of young girls playing football in the parks, whereas in France at the time it was one girl among many boys.”
Camille Abily training with OL Féminin. Photo: Wikicommons.
The transatlantic playing experience was thus an up-front introduction to American culture, while at the same time, a portal for the Sol’s teammates into Abily’s homeland and its football. “For them, France was immediately Paris,” she recalled of her colleagues, who loved her accent (“I hate my English accent,” she confided), “and suddenly, it is something that they knew. It was quite famous, the City of Love. So, it was pretty cool.”
It was a two-way exchange of knowledge, technical know-how, and culture as Abily engaged in informal sports diplomacy through communication, representation, and negotiation.
“In the United States, they didn’t know too much about French things,” she recalled, particularly of its female sports stars. Part of that could be attributed to the fact that France had not qualified or did not progress deeply in major international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup or Olympics. In some senses, her teammates learned a little about France and its football through Abily.
“I think that when my teammates discovered me, they discovered technical qualities, in particular, they were quite impressed. I was also able to show them the French know-how at the football level, more at the technical and tactical level than at the athletic level.”
The learning curve went in the other direction, too, and Abily learned much at the athletic level.
“The experience in the United States taught me a lot. It opened my mind a lot because inevitably, before, I was in a daily life in France with my culture, my habits and the fact of going abroad, putting myself in danger like that, discovering another culture, a new language, it really allowed me to open up to something else.”
The experience also prepared Abily to welcome Americans and other international teammates to her French clubs once she resumed her career back home. “I know what it's like to be in a country on your own, not knowing the language, being all alone. It’s really not easy for integration,” she acknowledged. The lesson of how to best integrate foreigners, to make them feel comfortable and help them learn the language stayed with her, and serve her onward career as a coach. “The most important thing, when you arrive in a country, is to learn the language to be able to express yourself both on the field for the players, but also outside and get by,” Abily emphasized.
Mapping the Connection
From Rennes, France to Los Angeles, California
Further Reading/Resources
[F] Interview with the author, July 31, 2023
[E] Richard Laverty, “Before Angel City there was LA Sol: A super team with a brief, bright history,” The Athletic, August 11, 2022.
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “‘You Open Their Minds:’ why France moved their women’s football academy away from Clairefontaine,” The Athletic, June 27, 2019.
[E] Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, “The up-front legacies of France 2019: changing the face of ‘le foot féminin,’” Sport in History, September 2019.
How to Cite This Entry
Krasnoff, Lindsay Sarah. “Voices: Voice ⚽0️⃣3️⃣5️⃣Camille Abily,” FranceAndUS, https://www.franceussports.com/voices/035-camille-abily. (date of consultation).