French handball team: "We have identified a suffering that I never imagined"

Unsurprisingly, Joël Delplanque, president of the French Handball Federation, and Philippe Bana, the national technical director, announced on Tuesday that everyone in the sport already knew. Appointed in the last quarter of 2016 in place of Claude Onesta on the bench of the Blues, Didier Dinart is no longer coach of the France team. After a catastrophic Euro, which saw the French out in the first round and revealed a deep break between the executives of the group and their coach, he was officially replaced as expected and announced in the media by his assistant , Guillaume Gille.

"You can imagine that I had a hard time with this elimination," explained Joël Delplanque, president of the Federation during a press conference organized at the handball house in Créteil (Val-de-Marne). It was a real shock that shattered some of our certainties. This shows the extent of the shock of this failure which I describe as unacceptable and humiliating. "

"The loss of a collective project had destabilized"

It is, according to Philippe Bana, "this heavy failure and suffering from no excuse" which caused the decision to dismiss the one who had won the sixth world title for the French team in January 2017. "J spent a good hour head-to-head with a dozen players in order to understand and clear the reasons for this failure, continued DTN. After a week of work, it was identified that the loss of the collective project had destabilized some of the players. But by going deeper into everyone's guts, we identified a suffering that I never imagined and which showed a crumbling, a real risk of losing the bases of this blue soul. "

The finding is severe. And the culprit identified. "There was a heartbreak, a break in ties because Didier's tension made him curl up," adds Philippe Bana. We have found this loss of meaning and links with everyone. It was estimated that in the state, we made the risk to the France team to plaster in the wall. We therefore tried to find a solution that lived up to the actors' ambition. In an emergency since France must qualify for the Games during a tournament, organized in France from April 17 to 19. And that she has no right to miss.

The new staff has not yet been identified

As expected, the solution is called Guillaume Gille. At 43, the one who was Didier Dinart's assistant and, in fact, admits "having also participated in the failure of the Euro", will therefore have the heavy task of starting his career as a high-level coach with "a mission commando ”aiming to qualify the French team for the Tokyo Games during the TQO organized by the AccorHotels Arena in Paris, from April 17 to 19. "I have a thought for Didier who lives in a delicate situation for which we are all responsible, explains the one who had the frankness to warn the coach of the changes to come last week by telephone. To make Didier fail this Euro would be absurd. But faced with the decision made by my leaders, I also feel the enormous responsibility of taking up the TQO challenge. I am someone with a blue soul and heart. I want to measure myself up to this challenge and ensure that the French team regains its confidence and its benchmarks that have frayed. "

Just ten weeks from the TQO, which will see the French team compete with Croatia, Tunisia and Portugal, the French team is therefore on the brink. Paradoxically, she has not yet identified the staff who will support Gille in her mission (for the time being) in the short term. "We are studying the profile of the people who will be by my side," explained the new coach. We don't close any doors. The idea is to quickly be able to offer you a new staff configuration. The ambition to qualify for the Games is real, the group has a pegged desire to return to the Games. This involves redefining what we do together and rebuilding a team. We have a solid foundation. This failure must make us grow. "