Because she was born in pain, no doubt, we hoped to see her play the first role of a kind of romantic comedy 2.0. It is rather in the costume of an extra from a disaster film that the French football team raised the curtain of the Tokyo Olympic Games. A little more than 24 hours before the opening ceremony scheduled for Friday evening (1 p.m. French) at the Olympic stadium in Tokyo, the Blues of André-Pierre Gignac missed their entry point this Thursday morning. In a private Tokyo Stadium to the public but pending the debut of the host country against South Africa, Sylvain Ripoll's players could not spare themselves an inaugural setback against the Mexico of Guillermo Ochoa (1-4 ).
Rather in verve against the former goalkeeper of AC Ajaccio, André-Pierre Gignac did not however depart from his good old habits. As usual or almost, the captain of the Blues once again made the nets of the Mexican goalkeeper tremble, which he "martyred" under the jersey of OM or the Monterrey Tigers. He, who had not scored a single goal in the blue jersey since March 29, 2016 against Russia, did not miss the penalty that the Nantais Kolo-Muani obtained shortly after the hour mark (67th) . But this first achievement will only have been a hide-and-seek for this French team too lacking in benchmarks and experience and not helped by difficult weather conditions (31 degrees and 70% humidity). With the exception of Arnaud Nordin's strike pushed back by Ochoa in the first period (30th),it is above all the El Tri players who have shown their advantage. And if the defender Modibo Sagnan, vigilant on the line (17th), and especially the goalkeeper Paul Bernardoni successively kept the Blues afloat, they could not prevent Vega (47th), Cordova (5th), Antuna (81st) and Eduardo Aguirre (90th) to inflict a heavy and cruel setback on Sylvain Ripoll's troops.
For its return to the Olympic Games, 25 years after the training led by Claude Makélélé and Patrick Vieira, the France team has not put itself in working order to follow in the footsteps of its elder, quarter-finalist in 1996 in Atlanta . To hope to continue the competition beyond the group stage, he will have to show another face in the two remaining matches, Sunday against South Africa, then Tuesday against Japan. Only the first two of the group will indeed qualify for the quarter-finals.