2023-08-17 13:19:42
This is the last episode of a long black series. The Marseillais lost on Tuesday against Panathinaikos in the third preliminary round of the Champions League after a penalty shootout. A new illustration of the difficulties of French clubs in the exercise.
Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Bayer Leverkusen (Germany), Fehervar (Moldova)… The French clubs thus remain on six defeats during their last eight sessions in the various European competitions.
The French teams also encounter difficulties in this exercise. The Blues of Didier Deschamps come out of two failures in the last two major competitions, in the World Cup final against Argentina and against Switzerland in the round of 16 of the Euro.
This lack of success does not spare the women’s team eliminated from the 2023 World Cup after a new penalty shootout against Australia. Eight years earlier, they had lost the same way against Germany at the World Cup.
Would France be hit by a form of curse? For Damien Della Santa, former specialist in set pieces in Nice, the explanation comes rather from the fact that the shots on goal are not taken seriously enough by the tricolor coaches. The statements made by some of them after a lost session attest to this. “A lottery” according to Didier Deschamps. “Fate did not choose us” for coach Hervé Renard. “It’s heads or tails,” said Rennes coach Bruno Genesio.
“There is a widespread belief in our football that it is not possible to work on them,” says Damien Della Santa. It is a typically French vision because our way of apprehending the exercise is different from other countries”. An observation shared by Jérôme Alonzo, former goalkeeper of PSG and consultant for the L’Équipe channel. “When leaders, coaches and players think it’s a coincidence, then we don’t work on them,” he regrets.
“Being bad is not inevitable”
Jérôme Alonzo, former PSG goalkeeper
Goalkeeper coach at Chelsea for fifteen years, Christophe Lollichon emphasizes the tedious side of the exercise which can put off coaches. “You have to watch a lot of it and focus on potential shooters,” he explains. In 2012, I studied all the penalties taken by Bayern Munich since 2007 and it took me thirty minutes. You have to want to spend time there,” he adds.
But for Thierry Barnerat, Fifa instructor and video analyst for Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, considering penalty kicks a French problem is “a shortcut”. He prefers to highlight the emotional charge inherent in this very special exercise. “France being a great footballing nation, the shooters have a lot of pressure and almost the duty to win,” he says.
If there is no instruction manual for shooting on goal, software and other tools are however available to coaches so that their players are better at this exercise. “Being bad is not inevitable,” asserts Jérôme Alonzo. It only remains for French football to appropriate them in order to put an end to this tradition.
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