We clear it all and start again ? Convincing against North Macedonia (39-29) then very disappointing against Switzerland (26-26), the French team hardly knows which foot to dance on before taking on Germany, this Tuesday (8:30 p.m. ), for what will be the shock of Group A. A situation that Ludovic Fabregas summed up perfectly in the columns of L’Equipe: “Knowing whether this draw is positive or negative, we will see in what we can produce against Germany. It could be a booster shot. If it can launch us even better into this Euro, so much the better. If this is the start of something that creaks a little, that would be damaging.”
Thanks to their clear inaugural success against the Macedonians, the Blues seem assured – even in the event of a setback against the Mannschaft – of competing in the main round despite their Swiss misstep. Unless there is a Dantesque defeat against the Mannschaft, and an equally clear victory for Andy Schmid’s gang against Macedonia. Moreover, qualification could be acquired before even entering the court if by chance at the end of the afternoon the Swiss had caught their feet in the Macedonian carpet…
But beyond the continuation of the adventure in this Euro, this duel against the eternal German rivals has many challenges. The first is purely mathematical, and will depend on which side the coin falls at the end of the meeting. Heads up, France wins, it finishes first in the group and enters the next round with already two points on the clock, which will not be too much before finding teams of the caliber of Croatia, Spain, or even the Hungary. On the head side, the Blues lose, they finish behind the Germans and they start the next round with no points in their bag, and ambitions at half mast. Or put another way, in the first case, the draw against Switzerland would ultimately have no consequences. On an accounting level, of course.
The second issue is more psychological. And he will play both sides. Indeed, already qualified, the Germans will not approach this third match in flip-flops and without resin on their fingers. On the contrary. They too want to enter the next round with two points, and plunge France, a direct rival, into crisis. Not to mention their good momentum to maintain after their clear victories over Switzerland (27-14) and Macedonia (34-25), in front of the Berlin public who will still be present in large numbers (more than 13,500 spectators). For Nikola Karabatic’s teammates, it will, on the contrary, be about chasing away the questions and other black clouds that have appeared in their blue sky until now. If everything had not been perfect against the Macedonians during their first outing, the Blues nevertheless had a good second half, even offering playing time to the entire squad. Hence the difficulty in determining precisely why the French TGV derailed against the Swiss…
Several avenues, however, exist for coach Guillaume Gille. “The seven against six game allowed our opponents to play for a very long time and also to get us out of our rhythm,” he analyzes. “The relationship between their pivots and Andy Schmid was complicated to manage and they found a lot of solutions on that. It broke the rhythm, it prevented us from getting the ball up and I think we are missing a few goals in the projection, in the goal in a wide space. “We were below our standards by scoring so little,” observes, in harmony with his coach, pivot Ludovic Fabregas. “That (scoring less than 30 goals in a match) hasn’t happened to us for a long time.”
A lack of realism symbolized by a number of individual failures, in particular on a back base in difficulty at nine meters. With only 6 minutes of playing time against Switzerland, Nikola Karabatic was of rare discretion, after already a barely successful performance against the Macedonians. Timothey N’Guessan missed a very open shot, Elohim Prandi and Melvyn Richardson alternate between the interesting and the mediocre, Nedim Remili lacks consistency… Which leaves Dika Mem a little too alone having to take on the shots. Add to this these recurring difficulties facing teams bringing out their goalkeeper to play with seven in attack and you will have the two main current areas of work for the Blues, who have no other choice but to raise their heads against the Germans to not to jeopardize their ambitions of winning the European title six months before the Olympic Games in Paris.
