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The joy of the Croatian players after the Davis Cup final victory on November 25, 2018. Philippe HUGUEN / AFP
The French team gave up on Sunday 25 November the Saladier d'Argent to Croatia by Marin Cilic (3-1), against which it will not have weighed much in the final of the Davis Cup in Lille. From 2019, a new formula of competition comes into effect.
For the last of Yannick Noah in the role of captain of the France team and the last Davis Cup in its traditional format before a radical makeover of the competition more than a century since 2019, the Blues have missed a double . Saturday, Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert had given them a reprieve by winning the double at the expense of the pair Mate Pavic / Ivan Dodig (6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (7/3)) . Noah on the start, Amélie Mauresmo will now be installed at the controls of the France team.
Second Davis Cup in its history for Croatia
The French team lost 3-1 to Croatia in the Davis Cup final after Lucas Pouille's loss to Marin Cilic in three sets (7-6 (7/3), 6-3, 6 -3) in the fourth game this Sunday. Croatia offers itself the second Davis Cup in its history, thirteen years after the first. Friday, Jeremy Chardy and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga could not do much, respectively against Coric (6-2, 7-5, 6-4) and Cilic (6-3, 7-5, 6-4 ).
The French did not weigh very heavily in this final against the Croats, with two top 15 players, Marin Cilic, world number 7, and Borna Coric, 12th at the end of the best season of his career, at 22 years old. In singles, they have not lost a set, or even a single game of service. In 2018, French tennis experienced its worst year for almost forty years on the circuit. For the first time since 1980, none of its representatives has reached the quarter-finals Grand Slam. In the ranking, this bankruptcy resulted in their disappearance of the top 20 in October, the never seen for twelve years. Since then, no one is even in the top 25.
In 2019 we change everything!
As early as 2019, the Davis Cup will not be contested according to its traditional format, but will focus around a week of competition bringing together eighteen nations, at the end of November unless rebounding, in Madrid. On August 16, the International Tennis Federation in Orlando, Florida, decided to change everything. The matches will be shorter (three matches in two sets winning instead of five in the best of five sets) and above all there will be no qualifying phase throughout the year.
This format change has caused many discontents in the world tennis. Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer, in favor of starting the new formula, decided to distance themselves. Money is one of the main reasons for the relooking since the investment of the group Kosmos, whose footballer Gérard Piqué is the boss, in the new Davis Cup would be three billion dollars over 25 years.
" It's catastrophic what has been done. I do not know if you realize, but this is the last time we will live a great atmosphere like that, it's dramatic, "told AFP a member of the Association Supporters Teams of France tennis present in Lille.