They dreamed of finally winning gold after five consecutive silver medals. Les Bleues will have to settle for elimination in the semi-finals of Euro 2023. The French basketball players lost, 67 to 63, against their Belgian counterparts. The latter will therefore face Spain this Sunday, June 25 in the final.
Just over twelve months from the 2024 Olympic Games which will be played in Lille (first round) and Paris-Bercy (from the quarters), the French women are falling back in the European hierarchy and will have to analyze this failure, while the Federation had made this Euro their main objective on the road to the Olympics.
Sunday, from 5 p.m., the French will try to win the bronze medal, against Hungary, which would allow them to climb on their eighth consecutive European podium – an unprecedented series since the hegemonic USSR from 1950 to 1991 (22 ranked finals, including 21 crowns) and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1966, which climbed the European podium 9 times in a row.
This Saturday, in the semi-finals, they first suffered the Belgian steamroller in the first two quarters, dominated in the offensive rebound (11 in the first 20 minutes). They took time to adjust the sights on 3-point shots, while the Belgians, under the leadership of Julie Vanloo, chained the award-winning baskets. Above all, they suffered the law in the racket of Emma Meesseman, winner of the last 3 Euroleagues and one of the best – if not the best – European players currently. The Belgian interior scored 24 points, including 18 in the first 20 minutes.
Coming back gradually in the game, 2 points in the last minute, the French missed 2 possessions to be tied in the last 30 seconds; they ended up giving up 4 points. For the French Federation, this premature setback is to be taken into consideration when approaching the home stretch towards the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, after strong choices during the preparation for this competition.
The staff of the France team had announced that, to seek the European title, the 12 players selected had to participate in all of the preparation from May 24, to streamline the automatic mechanisms between players. The problem arose for Marine Johannès, forced to go to the United States at the end of May to initial her contract with New York and to stay there until the beginning of June. Unable to show up at the start of the Blue rally, she was not selected, an intransigence of the staff who preferred to deprive themselves of one of their essential players rather than reconsider their demands.
The French group also had bad luck with the concussion in the first round of the French championship final between Asvel and Villeneuve d’Ascq, of their winger Gabby Williams, installed as a basic element of the squad at from Euro-2021 to become, like Marine Johannès, one of the essential cogs. With her potential return to training coming too late, Williams was not selected for the Euros, in which a third squad player, Iliana Rupert, injured her right shoulder in the final match. without stake, of the first round against Slovenia and has not played since.
Finally, the Federation had separated from Valérie Garnier in September 2021, setting the mission for Jean-Aimé Toupane to seek the European title. Successor to Pierre Vincent at the head of the France team after silver at Euro-2013, Garnier had chained four (lost) finals at the Euro, plus a bronze medal in Tokyo at the Olympic Games in 2021. Insufficient, had judged the French Federation, to be extended in office until the Olympic Games-2024.
