France beaten in the Nations League semi-finals by Brazil / AFP / Archives
The French volleyball team was beaten Saturday in the semifinals of the Nations League 3-0 (25-20, 25-18, 25-19) by an intractable Brazil, one month before the Olympic Games.
Laurent Tillie’s men, who qualified in extremis for the semi-finals thanks to their 3-2 victory over Poland, this time lacked the energy to manage to overthrow the South Americans.
The Brazilians, led by the man of the match Yoandy Leal (20 points), dominated the proceedings from the start of the first set. Despite a brief 19-19 tricolor return, the Auriverde then folded the first set 25-20 then the second with a slightly more marked gap (25-18).
Earvin Ngapeth’s teammates (5 points) were especially marked physically by a tournament in which they played seven games (out of 16) in five sets. This time there was no photo.
“Normally, when we play against teams that play very well, we manage to find solutions and to foil the opponent, there, that was not the case, it is clearly what made the difference”, estimated Nicolas Le Goff, central of the France team.
This League of Nations, played in a health bubble in Rimini, Italy, was mainly used to prepare the Blues for the Olympic tournament and allowed coach Laurent Tillie to establish his list of 12 players to go to Tokyo in a month (July 23 -8 August).
All is not yet over for the French who will play Sunday in the match for third place (11:30 am) against Slovenia, also beaten in three sets by Poland (25-22, 25-21, 25-23) in the second semi-final on Saturday.
“We come back down to earth a bit, it hurts a bit, but the important thing is to try to bounce back from the last game on Sunday to arrive as well as possible for the Games,” said Arnaud Josserand, assistant coach of the Blues .
For its part, Brazil will seek Sunday (3:00 p.m.) to build up confidence against the Poles before the Tokyo Games. The Brazilians were crowned in 2016 in Rio.
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