Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Antoine Massinon / A2M Sport Consulting / DPPI via AFP 17:07 p.m., May 25, 2023

Marine Johannès provisionally excluded from the France team. The basketball France team did not call its strong element due to its trip to the United States. The staff of Les Bleues highlights his unavailability to prepare for Euro 2023 with the rest of the group.

Aiming for the seventh sky without the star Johannes. The management of the women's basketball France team has deprived, in its quest for the title at Euro 2023 (15-25 June), its "X factor" which, engaged in the WNBA, can not fulfill the condition set to participate in the entire preparation. The back of the Asvel (28 years, 105 caps), capable of luminous passes and to catch fire to shooting, is forced, to validate his contract with the Liberty New York for the season of the North American championship (from mid-May to mid-September), to make a return trip to the United States and to stay there until June 1st.

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"I think of living together"

"With the trip, the jet lag, she could not have played the 2nd and 3rd (preparation matches against China), then we are 'off' (rest) until the 7th (last friendly match before the Euro)," explained to the press the manager of the Blues Céline Dumerc. Only "two training sessions and two matches" (including one training) remained before the Euro, which begins only three weeks after the end of the French season.

Too little, according to the staff, to oil the wheels of a France team that aims in Slovenia its third continental title (after 2001 and 2009) after five successive defeats in the final. "To be European champions, we can't afford to arrive at the last moment. Playing at the highest level requires automatisms. Time is running out. I think of the common experience, "said coach Jean-Aimé Toupane.

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The experience of 2022

Last year, for the World Cup at the end of September in Australia, he allowed Johannes and two other players, Gabby Williams and Iliana Rupert, to join the squad once the U.S. season was over - the preparation time allotted was much longer. "We didn't get the feedback we expected, that's why Aimé left with this in mind" this year, Dumerc said. After combining the European and American seasons, Johannès was injured three days before the entry of the Blues while Rupert, WNBA champion, had arrived only during the competition, tired.

Williams was there: she finished top scorer of Les Bleues (15.8 pts average), eliminated in the quarterfinals by China, future vice-champion of the world. This time she will miss the European appointment after suffering a concussion on May 13 with Asvel, which forces her to observe a rest of several weeks and therefore also to miss the start of the preparation.

Without this injury, the Franco-American would also have been "torn", in the words of Toupane about Johannès, between the lucrative and sportingly attractive WNBA and the national team. And the management of the Blues would also have had to decide as for "MJ", who shares the same initials as his idol Michael Jordan which she took up to the number on the jersey (the 23rd).

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Batum goes up against

According to Toupane, Johannès, crowned champion of France Monday, was initially not obliged by the WNBA to stay in the United States until June 1, which could have allowed him to participate in the entire preparation of the Blues. "But last Friday she called me and told me that we changed her contract, that she had to go," he said. "We were all waiting for a turnaround and for it to happen tomorrow (Friday)," Dumerc added.

The situation has not changed and the absence of Johannès has triggered the ire of the captain of the Blues Nicolas Batum. "She asks for a week to settle a contractual thing and we give her an ultimatum 'if you don't come, you won't make the Olympics'... I find it extremely disgusting," Batum said in an interview with online media First Team. "The Olympics (in Paris) is another subject. We'll see for next year," said Dumerc, former captain of Les Bleues.

Toupane for his part denies having "closed the doors of the France team to Johannès", against whom he has "nothing". "We know the player she is, what she did for the France jersey," he added. But this summer, she will be watching her teammates from New York.