[ad_1]
France faces Germany in the Olympic semifinals on Thursday, with the captain taking stock after advancing.
Belsey Envoy
What was the reason for this victory over Germany? : “From you! All of you… No, the whole of France hit us hard. We were all together, you, us, the staff, everyone. What happened six days ago (losing to Germany in the group stage, editor’s note), we were like this, we were at the bottom, we didn’t feel good. The coach (Vincent Collet) knew how to find the resources. With Nando (De Colo), we knew how to find the words, how to do it, these two old guys brought everyone together. Then it was individual. Everyone thought about it. This phase was “What do we want? Do we want to be Olympic champions or to reach the final like that? It’s not going to happen, guys. So what do we want?” Everyone tried to cheer up, the coach did it, we changed everything in two days. We spent a month preparing and almost nothing happened because we changed everything in the team in 48 hours.”
Vincent Colet : “He’s still showing who he is, and he’s outstanding. He took my hand when he was 15, and I’ve known him for 20 years. I thought Tokyo (2020 Olympics, 2021 Olympics) represented the pinnacle of his career. But now, five days later, it’s amazing. The way he’s brought us together and got everything back together has changed everything. For the record, my family came last night (Wednesday). My son wanted to go to the gym, and Vincent was in his office working, preparing for a fight, and his focus was on the cards. I was like, ‘OK, he’s really into it.’ It was 9 or 9:30 at night. He was alone in his office working. He’s our leader. When we see him so focused on winning a fight, we can only follow suit.”
Defensive performance : “Yeah, and besides, we didn’t play well in the first five minutes. We weren’t good at rebounding. If we had grabbed a few rebounds, we could have killed the game a long time ago, and we would have lost 60 points or less at most! We can still do better. This will be important for the next opponent.”
Geshon Yabusele and Mathias Lessot : “Torrential. No surprises. We said from the beginning that we hadn’t found the right formula yet. Where we figured out how to serve them, how to play around them. We found a good balance between the two. They’re terrifying. “Wimpy” is unlocking, too. The kid is 20 years old. He has all the talent in the world, but he’s only 20 years old… We put a little pressure on him. In the second period, he opened up a little bit more. He finally made a three-pointer (laughs). I’ve been carrying him around for the past two days. It’s been great.”
This will be the last time I wear this jersey.
Nicolas Batum
USA : “They are stronger than they were three years ago, that’s for sure. We are at home. These are the Olympics. You never know… We are also stronger than we were three years ago, but we are a little older. We are not going to be the favorites, but that’s the magic of the Olympics, it’s a basketball game, 40 minutes. Sometimes crazy things can happen… We have to rest, we have to be ready, we have to fight hard. We will have the whole room and the whole country behind us. It’s great. (…) It can only be magnificent. This will be the last time I wear this jersey. We have to prepare our team to give everything. We call them the Avengers. I watched the movie Endgame and at the end they had a one in 14 million chance. We might have one in 14 million… That says something. But you never know. (…) We have to wait until midnight (to enjoy), and at 12:01 in the morning we will move on to something else.”
atmosphere : “Tonight was crazy, I can’t imagine what Saturday is going to be like… I can’t wait.”
Isaiah Cordinier : “He’s horrible… like this team. Three Euroleagues, two inside players and him (Lessot and Yabusele), they all improved, and that’s what we needed. We found a good formula. They let go. We need everyone. That was the message from the beginning: ‘Play your game. You are here, be yourself in this team, be yourself! ‘ We found the formula, the lineup and the right things, and it works well so far.”
The difficulty of saying something to yourself in order to move forward : “No, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fun for us to say certain things to Nando’s. But we did it and we saw it worked. A lot of people would have said, ‘They got me drunk.’ No. The next day we were back to work and we kept going.”
Comments collected in mixed areas
[ad_2]
Source link
