For his managerial debut, Guillaume Gille was bound to hope for better, but the French team stammered their game, as was the case in January 2020 in Norway, and lost in Serbia by three goals for their first match. qualifiers for Euro-2022, for his first outing since his elimination a year ago in the first round of Euro-2020.
“Even if our team is under reconstruction, it will quickly be necessary to be more efficient than today”, tweeted Valentin Porte after the meeting.
The French will face Serbia again in Créteil on Saturday evening (7 p.m.) behind closed doors, still in qualifying for Euro-2022, with the opportunity to show a better face before flying to Egypt and the World Cup. 2021, for which the Serbs are not qualified.
To travel to Hungary and Slovakia in January 2022, the French will have to take one of the top two places in Group 1, which also includes Belgium and Greece, or finish in the top four third of the eight qualifying groups) .
Difficulty in attacking
After a start to the match in the lead (7-6, 13th), the Blues left the controls to the Serbs, colliding with the goalkeeper Dejan Miloslavljevic (11 saves) and failing to muzzle the Serbian attack carried by Lazar Kukic (6 goals), Mijajlo Marsenic (6) and Petar Djordjic (4).
Led by three goals at the break (14-11), the French returned to a unity of their opponents (16-15, 38th, then 19-18, 46th) thanks to the saves of Wesley Pardin (5 saves), returned in second period, and without fault of Kentin Mahé with the throws of seven meters (6 of 6).
But they failed to accelerate to get back in front.
They then scored up to five goals behind (25-20) in the last ten minutes, before picking up a little late in the game.
Michaël Guigou's teammates increased the loss of the ball, like a counterattack by Luc Abalo in the last eight minutes poorly conducted, and had difficulty finding themselves in attack, with a rear base often in failure (6 out of 17 cumulative for Nedim Remili, Timothey N'Guessan and Dika Mem).
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