The home stretch that will lead Les Bleues to Euro 2022 will be long.

Corinne Deacon knows it, and she's not getting carried away.

The time of impatience, excitement and pressure will come.

Above all, it is a question of using the next three weeks of work to perfect the tactical plan and the physical condition of a French team which has just started its preparation course on Tuesday.

How was the pre-course last week in the Basque Country?

There was rugby among the activities, no injuries?

No, we were well supervised by Thomas Darracq, the coach of the France (women's) rugby team.

It was a simple initiation, we didn't take any risks.

We did a course of physical and mental regeneration.

There was also a big part focused on cohesion.

We've known each other very well for a little while, but it was necessary to restart with a nice internship, with a dominant focus on cohesion and regeneration.

(…) We also did a cohesion internship before the 2019 World Cup so we didn't change anything.

We are ready to suffer, there will be efforts to be made, but the efforts we will share.

This is a normal and necessary period in view of our objective: to go as far as possible (to the Euro).

How much did you expect this entry into the competition?

There was no impatience on my part, the objective of the season was to qualify for the World Cup before.

We didn't take the wrong objective even though we know that it's difficult to play on several fronts.

With my staff, we managed to stay focused on qualifying for the World Cup.

Then we switched to preparing for the Euro.

(…) The excitement will come as we get closer to July 10 (date of the first match against Italy).

Today we have so much work to do, the Euro is so far away for me.

We are in the work, in the reflection, in the analysis, in the adaptation.

There is absolutely no excitement.

For the moment we are calm, we had a good training course last week, now it has to last, that the girls respond well to work, hoping that there are not too many injuries.

We will see day by day how this group will evolve.

You will face Cameroon and Vietnam, two non-European opponents, in a friendly.

Why them?

The important thing is already to have two matches.

It was quite difficult to find two opponents.

It was complicated to find European teams since we avoid playing teams against whom we could play afterwards.

We had also asked nations not qualified for the Euro but as the preparation is not in a Fifa window, the players were not available to the federations.

We turned to Cameroon, which is preparing for the CAN and Vietnam, which has qualified for the 2023 World Cup, two important opponents to establish our tactical plan and perfect our physical condition.

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  • Corinne Deacon

  • French women's team

  • European Cup

  • Soccer

  • Sport