Montpellier (AFP)

For his real return to competition after a muscle injury, Earvin Ngapeth offered a prestigious victory to the French team of volleyball against Italy, for his last match of the group stage of the Euro-2019, Wednesday evening in Montpellier.

With this success 3 sets to 1 (25-23, 22-25, 25-21, 25-22), the Blues leave the south of France with full confidence to go to the West, Nantes where the Hall XXL will host them on Saturday (19:30) for an eighth finals largely within their reach against Finland.

Against Bulgaria on Monday, Earvin Ngapeth had played only two points, time to release an ace, before returning to the bench. But with two more days of regeneration, the striker / receiver star of the 2015 European champions had recovered enough from his injury of ten days ago to play a little more than two sets and finish the game as the best French scorer of the match ( 16 points).

Admittedly, the match against Italy had a rather small sporting challenge - who will play Turkey and who will play Finland in the 8th finals - since both teams were sure before facing each other to find themselves in the same quarter of painting in Nantes.

- Football stadium atmosphere -

So difficult to learn for the rest of the tournament, while the two selections could end up for a place in the last square on Tuesday night (20:45) in Nantes.

But to see the commitment put and the basic six aligned by Laurent Tillie French side and Gianlorenzo Blengini side transalpine, neither team wanted to lose the European volleyball derby.

The French team was mistreated in the beginning of the first set, but Earvin Ngapeth allowed the Bleus to pick up on a series of three winning services, each with the chorus of "Still DRE", Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog . Rapper Ngapeth will have appreciated the wink.

He nearly put it back at the end of the second set, but Italy had taken too far to go up and not lose a first set in the tournament.

In the middle of the third set, Laurent Tillie preferred to rest and bring in his replacement luxury, Julien Lyneel, decisive in the money time of the 4th set, worn by a Marseillaise sung a capella by the public Montpellier to 20-19.

And even without Ngapeth, the Blues managed to contain at best the power of Osmany Juantorena and Ivan Zaytsev, still applied in reception.

The 7,144 spectators of the South Arena of France (best crowd of this first round in France) then put an atmosphere that mixed football stadium and southern feria. The huge rescue of the Blues libero, Jena Grebennikov at the start of the third set (4-2), helped ignite the Herault room.

© 2019 AFP