Obviously, it was all grimace on the French side in the mixed zone, after the French team's heavy defeat against Germany. The Blues explained that Nicolas Batum had tried to shake up the team at half-time, following this second quarter lost 24-9, in which Vincent Collet's troops sank…
What did the captain say to his troops in the locker room after this catastrophic passage?
“What kind of team do we want to be? What kind of team do we have to be? No particular consequences tonight (except for a much more difficult quarter-final…). That's the message I tried to get across at half-time: what do we want? What do we want?” he insists. “How do we want it? Tuesday, we do this, it's over.”
“How can we play like this from the beginning, stay connected, listen to the instructions and be good from the start? Above all, to have no regrets”
While Vincent Collet repeated that the identity of this French Team should be defensive, it is clear that this is not the case. The coach also admitted that the defensive stats collected since the “scrimmage” against Canada are falling, a very bad sign when the group should be gaining momentum.
Precisely, the Blues have a good chance of facing Canada in the quarter-finals on Tuesday. To hope, Nicolas Batum wants to rely on the second half, where the Blues showed better things.
“We showed for 15 minutes that we can be a good defensive team, with intensity, again tonight. If we can do that for forty minutes, we have a good chance of beating a lot of teams. I'm not saying we're going to win every game, but we have a good chance of beating a lot of teams. So now, it's up to us to find the solution. How can we play like that from the start, stay connected, listen to the instructions and be good from the start? Above all, to have no regrets. Now, we have to find the right combinations, the right players, to find this intensity from the start and the right rotations for forty minutes.”
The next three days are going to be busy…
Interview conducted in Villeneuve d'Ascq
