A month after wanting to establish a “strategy” to allow the French teams to win their penalty shootouts, which had particularly annoyed coach Didier Deschamps, National Technical Director Hubert Fournier wanted to apologize.
“I make my mea culpa,” Hubert Fournier explained to AFP this Tuesday. I made a communication error. I’m not the greatest communicator and my comments were misunderstood: I wasn’t telling Didier Deschamps and his teams, the A’s and the hopefuls, how they should approach a training session. shoot to the net. This is not my domain anyway. We explained. End of the story. »
The DTN explained on February 9 on RMC that it wanted to put in place a process for penalty shootouts, which the French teams have regularly lost in recent years. The A’s lost in the final of the World Cup against Argentina (3-3, 4 tab to 2) in 2022, the women in the quarter-finals of their World Cup against Australia (0-0, 7 tab to 6) and the Bleuets the final of the U17 World Cup against Germany in 2023 (2-2, 4 tab to 3).
A “misplaced” outing for Deschamps
In March, Deschamps judged the DTN media release to be “inappropriate” and “even disrespectful for the work carried out by national coaches, goalkeepers and video analysts”.
“Didier is the greatest coach in the history of French football,” Fournier further clarified. It was not my intention to tell him how to approach a penalty shootout, especially in the final of a World Cup where it is even more special. »
“But I wanted to inform people about what we are doing among young people because the format of the competitions is changing, there are less and less overtimes, and we decide directly with penalties. We lost two titles on penalties. It was the time to ask ourselves questions, how to better approach this exercise,” he clarified.
