Jean-François Pérès and Cyrille de La Morinerie
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1:57 p.m., March 27, 2023
Football and Kylian Mbappé’s Blues are already back on the pitch, three days after their superb victory against the Netherlands (4-0). For the second day of the Euro 2024 qualifiers, the French are in Dublin to face Ireland. Irish footballers hope to imitate their rugby colleagues, winners of the French in the Six Nations Tournament.
There has been a kind of sweet euphoria in Dublin since the Grand Slam of the players at Clover during the Six Nations Tournament. So much so that the modest Irish football team, only 48th in the world rankings, begins to dream. “At the moment the Irish rugby team are the world No. 1, so it gives a lot of confidence even if in football we are less strong. The France team are obviously a great team, but we are here and everything is possible”, reports Danny, an Irish supporter met in the bowels of the Dublin stadium. The weather is nice, the sun shines in the center of Dublin.
On paper, this team is nothing of a scarecrow, it was not even at the World Cup in Qatar and its last participation in the Euro dates back to 2016. The majority of its players play in 2nd or 3rd English division, but for two years his style of play has evolved, more ambitious, like the scorer Evan Ferguson, an 18-year-old diamond in the rough. And that certainly did not escape captain Kylian Mbappé.
“This team is very rough”
“We must not think that we will have the ball easily and that we will be able to deploy easily while waiting for it to happen. By reputation, we believe that this team is very rough, but they play good football We will have to be very careful, be aggressive, I hope we will emerge victorious from this battle”, reports the captain of the France team at a press conference.
The Irish coach showed his players images of the famous hand of Thierry Henry, during the play-off match for the 2010 World Cup, to galvanize them. The Blues are all operational, Olivier Giroud should be established on Monday with the ambition of scoring a 54ᵉ goal for the France team. They will be 50,000 this evening in an Aviva Stadium that is announced to be boiling and among them, there will be 3,000 French people. One of the most important movements of supporters in the history of the Blues.