Carmelo Anthony and the emblematic former winger of the Australian selection Penny Taylor brought luck to the French basketball teams. Responsible for the draw for the men’s tournament for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Tuesday evening in Switzerland, the former NBA and Team USA star shooter allowed Vincent Collet’s men to approach the meeting of their lives in the best possible way. terms. Guaranteed to avoid the American armada, for a (happy) history of international diffusion, the Blues still risked encountering very heavy problems due to their presence in the third hat, after the disastrous 18th place during the Coupe du world 2023.
In Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Victor Wembanyama’s gang will certainly face the surprising reigning world champion, namely Germany. But apart from this shock, it is very open since the other opponents of this group B will be the modest Japan (no Top 8 of major tournament in its entire history) and the winner of the Olympic qualifying tournament played at the beginning of July in Riga (Latvia). ).
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The monstrous groups A and C in men
Please note that this one will not be the most formidable of the last minute qualifiers, since the ticket will be played between Latvia, Georgia, the Philippines, Brazil, Montenegro and Cameroon. Which leads to an obvious observation: France inherited the easiest of the three groups, by far. For comparison, Group A includes the impressive Canada of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Australia, bronze medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, and the winner of the TQO in Valencia, which will probably be Spain, which we do not presents more, but also that of the Athens TQO, probably Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Greece or Luka Doncic’s Slovenia.
For group C, it’s barely less crazy, apart from the presence of South Sudan condemned to last place, between the American “Dream Team” which is taking shape, Serbia, reigning world vice-champion and potentially reinforced by the unplayable Nikola Jokic, and to a lesser degree the winner of the Puerto Rico TQO, which could be Lithuania, Italy or Puerto Rico. It therefore promises a hell of a lot of carnage in these two other groups to reach the quarter-finals alone.
Les Bleues avoid Team USA, Belgium and Japan
“We will finish our group matches against Germany, for what I hope will be the group final. We have to come out first,” assumes Vincent Collet, aware that apart from first place or the rank of best second of the three groups, there could be a difficult quarter-final against the United States (there will be a new draw comes out with two hats after the group stage). Blues manager Boris Diaw obviously wants to remain cautious: “There is no easy group. With Germany being the reigning world champions, it’s not going to be that simple. » Fine, but the worst was avoided.
The French women’s team has the same feeling, inheriting a homogeneous group B but within its reach, with Australia (3rd in the 2022 World Cup), Canada (4th in the same event) and a Nigeria which is a priori very below. Here too, there is hardly any debate: group A is a bit scary, between the tough three-way match Serbia-Spain-China (Puerto Rico seems far behind), and group C, that of death, with the favorite Team USA, but also Belgium (reigning European champion), Japan (Olympic vice-champion in Tokyo) and finally Germany.
“We can estimate that we have inherited an affordable group, on paper at least,” summarizes Les Bleues captain Sarah Michel. Three years after the two combined medals in Tokyo (silver for the men, bronze for the women), we are even more inclined to expect similar performance (or even better) from the two French basketball teams in view of this favorable draw .
2024-03-20 14:36:09
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