Yamaga (Japan) (AFP)

Unrecognizable during their first two games, French handballers must react, first in the heads, to avoid the road exit in the first round of the World Cup in Japan.

The meeting of Tuesday (11:00 pm) against the very weak Australia will not pose them any problems and everything will be decided Wednesday against Germany then Friday against Denmark.

The players and the coaches have spent the day of rest trying to understand how the champions of Europe (2018) and the world (2017) have lost their game to the point of being beaten by South Korea (29- 27) and then fail by Brazil (19-19), two nations that are in principle not candidates for the podium.

For Olivier Krumbholz, the answer is to look for the mind: "the competition has been poorly addressed in a lot of heads". The coach believes that the team, having already in his pocket, thanks to its European title, his ticket to the Olympic Games, the ultimate goal of this group that has won everything else, no longer the "crazy rage" of the previous years.

- Find the "joie de vivre" -

The players, they, defend themselves to have approached this competition with a lower motivation. "We arrived here declaring that we wanted to win this World Cup and the goal is always the same," said the winger Manon Houette.

Seen from the outside, there is perhaps not in Japan as exhilarating prospect as giving his first title to this generation as in 2017 or triumph before the supporters of Bercy as in 2018. But for the player of Metz, preserve "the respect that France has managed to create on the international scene in recent years has nothing of anything".

Always concerned by the competition, the French recognize that they have to find the "joie de vivre" of the last two years that has also lost a bit.

"It shows in the field, before we saw smiles and a lot of communication, we felt happy to play together and perform while there we are not," admits the half-center Grace Zaadi.

In terms of accounting, the scenarios are multiple and everything remains possible. The worst, elimination in the first round, is certain if France does not beat Germany or Denmark. But the best, a passage to the final round with enough points to keep the course on the last square, remains possible with two victories. The two initial missteps would then be more than mere incidents.

© 2019 AFP