You have to dry the flowing tears, hide the distress of lost looks in a quickly damp towel of a salty and bitter liquid. The distress of the Blue is unfathomable. They undoubtedly want to go home already to continue to cry while forgetting that there is a match to play on Sunday, the bad named little final, for a bronze medal identical to that of 2023, which we will forget quickly.
Before leaving the head -up room, the girls look at the display board that no longer moves. It indicates 65-64 for Spain and there is nothing more to do with it.
For a small point, the Blue let Spain spin in the Euro 😢 final
A cruel defeat that the tricolors will have to digest to get bronze on Sunday 👊#Passionately | #EuroBasketWomen
– French basketball teams (@frapobasketball) June 27, 2025
The clock cannot go back 8 tenths from second back to restore another frank throw to Iliana Rupert in order to equalize to tear the extension. The Olympic vice-champion had, in the last second, two match balls, two throws to store the friends, led 63-65. She marked the first but missed the second. The ball turned around the circle but did not return. Basketball is a cruel sport.
“My feeling is disappointment, confesses the coach, Jean-Aimé Toupane. Afterwards, I am proud of my daughters, proud of this team. We made a very good tournament and it is played out. We missed a little bit of lucidity. But what the team has shown from the start is very good, there is no complaint to send to anyone because we win and lose together. It did not fall on the right side, but we had the merit of returning to a point. If we had put this frank throw, maybe that in overtime we forgot everything. We didn’t put it and it doesn’t matter. »»
The first defeat since the Games final
However, it shouldn’t be happening like this. The Stadium of Peace and Friendship, in Piraeus, a few balls of Ballon du Mont Olympe, was to be that of a new triumph of French basketball.
Jean-Aimé Toupane’s team had crushed everything since the Olympic Games, qualifications for the Euro as the start of the tournament, that nobody envisaged something other than a European champion title, the first since 2009.
OK, there were some absent (very) notable in the workforce (Johannès, Williams, Malonga retained in WNBA). And we can of course put this failure on their back. It will surely be done here or there, rightly or wrongly.
Despite this, it was still written: nothing seemed to be able to resist the tricolor machine, unbeaten since the unforgettable final of the games (66-67) and which, since then, had crushed everything in its path. Surely against too weak opponents.
Who is the fault?
Spain, which has made so many miseries in tricolor basketball for years, among boys and girls, has still written another story, more sad if we do not speak the language of Cervantes.
Who is the fault? Clearly, to the partners of Captain Valérian Ayayi, because Spain was really temptable this time. The proof: a big quarter of an hour from the end, France was 10 points ahead. Normally, with such a lead, it goes.
Only, the game of Blue was denied as it goes, as fast and surprisingly as there is inexplicable. They let the Iberians return to the match, regain confidence and hurt them very much in the worst moments. Drawing on the veterane Alba Torrens (12 points, 7 assists) and on the amazing Pivot Awa Fam who, at 19, released a mammoth match (21 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists), the Roja did what it takes.
A second catastrophic half-time
Not France, which delivered a second catastrophic half. Breakdown dry with address, the girls of Toupane made a sheet of stats at this level that should never be shown in schools: 5 successful shots at 3 points out of 30 attempts despite good positions. When we think that it would have been enough to return one more to go to the final … “Since the start of the competition, we were shooting pretty well, so we had confidence in our shoots, analyzes the captain on RMC. The Spaniards let us go, they pushed us to take the shots but we did not put them. We also took 17 offensive rebounds we also had opportunities to score. But… “
The tricolors must now swallow their disappointment to get the bronze that they have not come to seek. It will be Sunday at 4.30 p.m. “We will re -mobilize even if we will not have the medal that we hoped for. The most important thing is to finish the tournament well, ”promises Jean-Aimé Toupane.
