Not everything was easy during this quarter-final, but the France team was able, in the second half, to enforce logic and hierarchy to put an end to the Czech Republic’s superb run (33-22) during this World Championship. On Friday, the Blues, reigning world vice-champions, will challenge either Sweden or Germany for a place in the final.
The first period offered confirmation of the scenario that could be expected between a dominating French team, provided they played their game effectively. But as soon as it relaxed, the talent of the Czechs found sufficient space to express and maintain suspense. Thus, after ten minutes of perfectly controlled play, the Blues calmly led the score (8-5). An advantage which was accentuated a few moments later with a superb achievement from Tamara Horacek (10-6). But suddenly, the beautiful French machine was going to seize up following a failure by Chloé Valentini alone on the counter-attack, which could have given her partners five steps ahead.
Instead, the Czechs, well led by their star Marketa Jerabkova and left-handed winger Veronika Mala, resurfaced by taking advantage of misses and other ball losses during the last ten minutes of the first act which were not very convincing. However, thanks to a final seven-meter throw, France returned to the locker room with a two-goal lead (18-16). But with a strong taste of incompleteness on the offensive level, and having been shaken up like never before on the defensive level since the start of the competition. An observation which continued at the restart, even if the entry into the position of goalkeeper of Laura Glauser did good to the French women still in the tough shooting. With the exception of their captain, Estelle Nze Minko, who scored two goals to give her team a five-point lead (23-18, 38th).
An advantage which would prove crippling for the physically exhausted Czech players, with eight or nine players overused since the start of the competition and who ended up paying the consequences. Faced with a new French defense and a last rampart, Laura Glauser, demonic (12 saves in the second half alone), the Czechs came up against an insurmountable wall and little by little, the gap grew irremediably to reach ten units to three minutes from the end (31-21), before stopping at eleven at the final whistle (33-22). A gap which says a lot about the excellence of the second half of Les Bleues, but which should not make us forget the difficulties of the first act.
