Is a forewarned woman worth two? As the days and matches go by, the 2023 World Cup likes to undo each other’s statutes, knocking off their pedestal the impudent already thinking of the next day’s match rather than that of the day.
In the cemetery of the ambitious women, already rest in peace, the double American title holders, the Canadian Olympic champions, the German European vice-champions or the Brazilian South American champions. A prestigious list that the French do not plan to join this Tuesday (1 p.m., M6) when they have to challenge the unexpected Moroccans in the round of 16 in Adelaide.
A meeting that they will approach in the costume of favorites, as Eugénie Le Sommer admitted with good grace. “We are not going to hide it: we come with a lot of ambition, and that has not changed because we are playing Morocco. We have a lot more experience than this team, and it will be up to us to use that to put in the right ingredients. Afterwards, as we have seen, the status of favorite means nothing. We will be attentive, we have humility, we do not take ourselves for others. Morocco is inferior on paper but when you see who they have released and where they are, it is that this team has qualities.
Among these, one is on the bench and is named… Reynald Pedros. Became coach of the Lionesses of the Atlas in November 2020, the former Nantes and Blue confirms, at the international level, the success he experienced when he officiated on the bench of Olympique Lyonnais, with which he has notably won two Champions Leagues, in 2018 and 2019. At the time, he had managed Wendie Renard, Amel Majri or even Selma Bacha, then very young.
Which gives him a serious advantage: “I know this French team perfectly, it’s an advantage”, he claimed after the success over Colombia synonymous with historic qualification for Morocco, and Arab football as a whole. “It’s a very strong team. It will be a very difficult match but if we have the same state of mind as against the Colombians, we can hope to qualify, and we will do everything for it.
Between a team that is living a dream for its first participation in a World Cup and one that is aiming for, at least, a place in the last four, the pressure will not be the same in Adelaide. As a shock in the form of revenge of the last Euro against Germany loomed, France seems to have won the exchange with Morocco, whose rise against South Korea and Colombia (victories 1-0) cannot erase the heavy defeat against the Germans (0-6). Seeing only this rout would light the bonfire of vanities, even if the arguments in favor of Les Bleues are not lacking: greater experience of the (very) high level, an additional day of recovery, a last “managed” group match on the physical level while the Moroccans had to give everything to continue the adventure, a superior technical potential…
During the only confrontation between the two nations, the Blues had also clearly won (6-0) in Casablanca. But the meeting dates back to 2008, when women’s football was still in the prehistoric era in Morocco. Which has not been the case since 2020 and the implementation of a very ambitious development of the practice, symbolized by the organization of the African Cup of Nations last year, during which the Lionesses of the ‘Atlas reached, and lost, the final against South Africa (1-2) in front of more than 50,000 spectators, proof of the strong tremor that runs through this country. But, even if the Blue ones plead for a development of women’s football in the world, they will not mind that it waits four more years to assert itself in Morocco.
