“You are the best prepared team in the world!” “: Emmanuel Macron came to encourage the players of the XV of France on Monday, asking them to make the French “proud and happy”, four days before the opening match of the 2023 Rugby World Cup against New Zealand.
The president went to the team’s base camp in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine) and greeted Fabien Galthié’s players and the management one by one. “You are at home, you are the best prepared team in the world, there is no doubt about it,” he told them, while defending himself from “wanting to put pressure on them” . As the French face the New Zealanders, three-time winners of the competition, in the opening match on Friday at the Stade de France (9:15 p.m.), Emmanuel Macron called on them to “enter the competition with determination”.
“We often came close” to winning the World Cup, the French having failed three times in the final – including one narrowly (8-7) against New Zealand in 2011 -, noted the head of the State. “You will be brothers in arms who will fight until the last second […]. The team is bigger, the nation is bigger than each of you. But make us proud and happy,” he concluded. The president was then to have lunch with the XV of France, which will train at 4:30 p.m.
While the controversy born of Friday’s selection of Bastien Chalureau for the France team for the Rugby World Cup does not weaken, so much so that the second line of Montpellier will speak at the end of the day on Monday, the Head of State s is expressed at the microphone of RMC: “It’s the coach, the coach who chooses his players and it’s very good like that, so I’m not going to comment on his choices”, he says in reference to the selection of Bastien Chalureau, sentenced in 2020 for racist violence, a court decision which he appealed.
He adds: “It’s never good, and I am the first, to comment on legal proceedings when they are in progress, so I will not comment. The third thing, I think it’s important, I know that Bastien will do it, that he expresses himself there too with his heart, that he speaks his truth. Under no circumstances should this disturb the preparation and the process. It’s a team, you have to leave it unified. I want them to think of only one thing: rugby, playing and winning. »
