The French basketball club Villeneuve-d’Ascq plays the Women’s Euroleague final on Sunday at 6 p.m. against the Turkish club Fenerbahçe. In a position of outsiders, Rachid Meziane’s players will still try to become the first French team to win the premier European competition since Valenciennes 20 years ago.
Published on: 04/14/2024 – 09:19
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They will have to overcome dizziness: the Villeneuve-d’Ascq basketball players are tackling “more than a mountain” for their first Euroleague final, Sunday April 14 at 6 p.m., against the terrifying Fenerbahçe of Valérie Garnier, title holder.
It’s an Everest to climb or rather the neighboring Mount Medetsiz, a 3,500 meter summit that can be seen from the terrace of the players’ hotel through the smog of the sprawling port city of Mersin on the Turkish coast.
To imitate their predecessors from Valenciennes, the last French team to be finalist and crowned in C1 twenty years ago, Janelle Salaün’s band must become only the third club this season to bring down the Stambouliotes.
The figures are dizzying: the Turkish team coached by Valérie Garnier, the former Blue coach and bronze medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, has won 53 of its 55 matches this season.
“Valérie has an expression that I like to use: the ‘Fener’ is in the culture of winning, we are more in the culture of exploiting”, summarizes the coach of the Northerners Rachid Meziane, former assistant to Garnier in the French team.
“This outsider posture suits us well”
Already falling to the Hungarians of Miskolc in the quarters, their “Warriors” returned to the exhilaration of the summits by returning to Prague in the semi-final on Friday (84-78), which was nevertheless participating in its third Final Four in a row.
“This outsider posture suits us well, judge Rachid Meziane. Even if it is more than a mountain that awaits us.”
A yellow and blue mound first in the stands, where the local sections of “Fener” supporters made up the numbers on Friday in the half with their own tarpaulins on the railings of the Servet-Tazegül hall (7,500 seats).
A reference also to the asymmetry of means – from simple to approximately threefold – and therefore of staff, which outline an extreme final ascent.
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“They only allow themselves to play a player like Marième Badiane for ten minutes,” says Rachid Meziane about the French international, “that proves the tank.”
When Villeneuve-d’Ascq entered the last four for the first time, the Belgian pivot of “Fener” Emma Meesseman alone won the competition five times.
“If we let the qualities of Fenerbahçe express themselves, we are dead”
American-Croatian leader Shavonte Zellous did have a victorious adventure with Galatasaray in another life, ten years ago, but this new experience, “for others, it’s Disneyland”, recalls Rachid Meziane.
“If we let the intrinsic qualities of the players but also the collective put in place by Valérie of this Fenerbahçe team express themselves, we are dead”, summarizes the man who is also coach of Belgium and therefore of Meesseman. “Obviously, defensively, we have to make even more effort than usual.”
His “crazy players”, laughing when he dedicated his Euroleague coach of the year award to them on Saturday, display a confidence that stands up to all odds.
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“Whoever we play, we will beat them. I don’t enter the court imagining that I am going to lose or without the ambition to win,” maintains its leader, Kamiah Smalls, 18 points Friday.
“They are tough as hell,” confirms the other star of ‘Fener’, Kayla McBride, about the Northerners. “Many people thought they were losers, but not me.”
Inhabited by faith, this group has a credo: to become the third French club crowned in the queen of club competitions in Europe, after Bourges (1997, 1998 and 2001) then Valenciennes (2002 and 2004).
With AFP
