Shall we erase everything and start over? Convincing against North Macedonia (39-29) and very disappointing against Switzerland (26-26), the team of France does not know on which foot to dance before measuring against Germany, this Tuesday (20:30), for what will be the shock of Group A. Ludovic Fabregas summed it up perfectly in the columns of L'Equipe: "Whether this draw is positive or negative, we'll see it in what we can produce against Germany. It can be a wake-up call. If it can get us off to an even better start in this Euros, so much the better. If it's the beginning of something that squeaks a bit, that would be damaging.
»Thanks to their clear opening win over the Macedonians, Les Bleus seem assured – even if they lose to the Mannschaft – of playing in the main round despite their Swiss slip-up. Unless there is a Dantesque defeat against the Mannschaft, and an equally clear victory for Andy Schmid's team against Macedonia. Moreover, qualification could be secured even before entering the court if by chance at the end of the afternoon the Swiss had caught their feet in the Macedonian carpet...
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But beyond the continuation of the adventure in this Euro, this duel against the eternal German rivals has many stakes. The first is purely mathematical, and will depend on which side the coin falls on at the end of the encounter. On the battery side, 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 calibre of Croatia, Spain, even Hungary. On the other side, Les Bleus lost, they finished behind the Germans and they started the next round with no points in their bag, and their ambitions at half-mast. Or to put it another way, in the first case, a draw against Switzerland would ultimately have no consequences. From an accounting point of view, that is.
The Germans are highly motivated by the idea of tormenting Les Bleus
The second issue is more psychological. And he'll 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 go into 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 be, on the contrary, a question of chasing away the questions and other dark clouds that have appeared in their blue sky so far. If everything had not been perfect against the Macedonians in their first outing, the Blues had nevertheless produced a good second half, even offering playing time to the entire squad. Hence the difficulty of determining precisely why the French TGV went off the rails in front of the Swiss...
The seven-on-six game allowed our opponents to play for a very long time and also took us out of our rhythm
Guillaume Gille
Several avenues, however, exist for coach Guillaume Gille. "The seven-on-six game allowed our opponents to play for a very long time and also took us out of our rhythm," he said. "The relationship between their pivots and Andy Schmid has been difficult to manage and they have 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 from wide area." "We were below our standards by scoring so little," observes the pivot Ludovic Fabregas, in osmosis with his coach. "That (scoring less than 30 goals in a game) hasn't happened to us for a long time.
»A lack of realism symbolised by a number of individual failures, particularly at a struggling rear base from nine metres out. With only 6 minutes of playing time against Switzerland, Nikola Karabatic was unusually discreet, after a poor performance against the Macedonians. Timothey N'Guessan missed a very open shot, Elohim Prandi and Melvyn Richardson alternated between interesting and mediocre, Nedim Remili lacked consistency... Which leaves Dika Mem a little too lonely to have to take responsibility for the shots. Add to that these recurring difficulties against teams that take their goalkeeper out to play with seven in attack and you have the two main areas of work for Les Bleus, who have no choice but to raise their heads against the Germans so as not to jeopardize their ambitions of winning the European title six months before the Olympics in Paris.