The step was too high for the Blues. In the final of the Women’s Nations League, the France team was soundly beaten by Spain, the reigning world champion (2-0). Coach Hervé Renard was bitter at the post-match press conference. “Football is simple: you have to be aggressive when you don’t have the ball, and when you are able to recover it, you must not lose it immediately”he summarized at a press conference after the logical defeat of his players in the final of the League of Nations.
“We must persevere”
“They put a lot of pressure on us and we had difficulty responding, we found ourselves very quickly suffocated”, he added on the reasons for the failure of the Blues in front of the Spanish world champions. The French coach saw his team “stand together but find yourself in difficulty many times” because she was not “aggressive enough” and committed “far too many technical errors” against the Spaniards who “do very little”.
“I faced Spain at the 2018 World Cup with Morocco, against a midfielder Iniesta, Isco, Busquets. I felt like I was seeing the same thing tonight.”, he compared, praising the quality of the Roja midfielder, led by Ballon d’Or Aitana Bonmati. The loser of a final must, he said, “Always question yourself, because only the winner doesn’t have a very bad headache. The other must persevere.”
“We lost against someone stronger than us and we have to go back into battle” with a view to the Paris Olympic Games this summer, the big objective announced by the former Saudi Arabia coach when he arrived at the head of Les Bleues. “In football everything is possible, but I think that today there is a world number 1 team by a long way who will still be the team to beat. It will not be an easy task, we will have to progress and learn lessons”he concluded.