Leicester boss Amandine Miquel on rise from attacking keeper to coach

By the time Williams was featuring at her first major tournament for England in 2005, Miquel was already enrolled in coaching courses and aspiring to get to a World Cup as a manager – an ambition she still has today.

“When I said ‘OK I can’t make the World Cup as a player any more I will find a job that gets me to it anyway’,” she said.

“Then I looked at my skills and I thought I will try go for coaching.”

At the same time she started studying to be a teacher, taking after her parents whose careers took them and their young family around the world – from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion to North America, England and Spain.

“My grandmother says I’m a teacher, and that I teach football. It reassures her,” Miquel said.

“It’s a bit like when you tell your parents you want to be a singer. It’s a sell when you are a woman to say you are going to be a professional player or coach. Any reasonable parent will say ‘no, you have to get a real job’. But hopefully it’s becoming a real job and more of us are at a good level so we can make it our day-to-day job.”

It was on the islands of Reunion and Mayotte – two French territories that lie off Madagascar – where Miquel got her earliest coaching experiences.

She then went to build a career managing in lower leagues of French football with Bergerac and Niortais before she was appointed boss of Reims – a club she took from relegation danger in the second division to promotion to France’s top flight, and the brink of Champions League football qualification, in eight years.

“What was most enjoyable is that from the first season to the end of the eighth, we never dropped, we always finished higher with either results or points. We never went backwards,” she said.

“That really drives you, to have that every season to be better. And maybe that is why I left because I was not sure I could do it a ninth time.”

What she achieved in the Champagne region with one of the smaller budgets in France’s top flight is what drew her to Leicester’s attention in the Women’s Super League.