Blues vs Portugal: Launching the Olympic Year in the Nations League

More than a month after their elimination in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in Australia, the Blues meet; this Friday in Valenciennes (9:10 p.m.), Portugal in the Nations League, a first meeting to launch their Olympic year.

09:00 | updated at 09:02

After the tears of August 12 in Brisbane, eyes are fixed on the horizon of the Olympics. For the third time in a row, the Blues left the World Cup at the gates of the final four, after a stifling penalty shootout which went in favor of Australia, the co-organizing country (0-0, 7 -6 tab).

This dark series is enough to raise doubts one year before the home Games, but the Blue seem to want to sweep away these fears at the dawn of this new season, which begins with this League of Nations, a brand new competition also qualifying for the Olympics . First this Friday (9:10 p.m.) against Portugal in Valenciennes, before going to play in Austria on Tuesday.

Already qualified as hosts, the Blues will be able to use this first women’s edition to maintain this positive group dynamic and accumulate “experience”, in the words of Wendie Renard.

Bacha: “We just have to act”

Because according to the 33-year-old captain, it was “the experience”, and not the mind, which fished in Oceania: “Many were experiencing their first World Cup and experience cannot be bought. I hope that we will still store up some maturity, some vice,” she said on Wednesday in Clairefontaine.

For young fullback Selma Bacha, “very solid foundations” were laid in Australia for future competitions. “We had everything, everything was perfect, we spent 52 days together. There was nothing to complain about, it will help us for the future even if we would have liked to win this World Cup,” she explained.

“After this World Cup, I said that I stopped talking, we just have to act”, continued the 22-year-old Lyon nugget, for whom this elimination is “the hardest event of (her) career”.

2024, finally the happy new year?

But with their new boss Hervé Renard, the Bleues have good reason to believe in an international podium: their consistency at the highest level – systematic quarter-finals in major competitions since 2009 – is unrivaled on a world scale, and their squad finally seems built to glean titles.

The association between the most experienced (Renard, Eugénie Le Sommer) and the youngest (Selma Bacha, Maëlle Lakrar, Vicki Becho) works, just like the Renard method, a selector who is at once protective, demanding, empowering towards of its executives and focusing its off-field work on the mental side.

“He missed a lot of little things, but the mental aspect is important to the extent that you put your game in place, because it is also a strength of character to be able to do it against any team,” confided Eugénie Le Sommer, 34 years old.

Executives on the comeback

One year before the Olympic Games, the second objective of Hervé Renard’s two-year contract, the Blues can also count on the return of the injured, who they sorely missed in Sydney.

For this first post-World Cup gathering, Hervé Renard also recalled defender Griedge Mbock, back after a serious knee injury, and Amandine Henry, who had been forced to give up the trip to Oceania less than two weeks before the ‘event.

Three globalists are missing from their list: defender and revelation Maëlle Lakrar, midfielder Kenza Dali and Naomie Feller, injured.

The technician should soon recover Marie-Antoine Katoto, away from the field for more than a year, due to a serious knee injury and who played again with PSG last weekend.

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