The French coach returned to the draw against Iceland (1-1) on Monday at the end of the first round, with a reorganized formation around Melvine Malard, “a talented young person” who “never disappointed”.
You have used twenty players in this first round. Should we expect to find a hard core in the knockout stage?
Corinne Deacon: You have to be able to trust everyone. The players who had had less playing time so far, like Melvine Malard, proved that they wanted. They are part of the group, of the adventure, it was important to concern them this evening. We had a mission, that of winning, we failed to achieve it. But the VAR was against us tonight, he denied us two goals and we took a penalty because of him, it was not on our side tonight.
Has Melvine Malard earned her place as a center forward? Why did you establish her, after having hinted the day before that it would be Ouleymata Sarr?
It’s a good try but I won’t answer (laughs). You have to decipher between the lines. Melvine is young, she showed great things in training. Until now I had rather used it on one side and it has never disappointed us. And it’s still the case this evening with a very good performance, with this goal which almost gave us the victory. She is a talented young player. She does not calculate the efforts, she gives a lot, and tonight I wanted to return the favor.
The France team scored little in the second half. Is it worrying before facing the Netherlands on Saturday?
No. The main thing is to score one goal more than the opponent. We had two goals disallowed by VAR, we hit the uprights twice, we created chances. I thought we were better in the second half than in the first. Iceland pushed, she played her all. There is no concern at all: we rotated, we gave playing time, we rested some players. The main thing is not to have any injuries, knowing that we were already qualified. It’s not easy to find motivation in this kind of situation, despite everything the girls responded well. The end of the match did not smile on us, but perhaps we could have managed it differently too.