There was a scent of the irrational, an almost mystical atmosphere around the quarter-final against Australia, Saturday August 12 in Brisbane. On several occasions, the Blues have thought that success would make them their favorites. But this rascal of fate slipped away at the last moment, turning its back on the French footballers.
The geography is sometimes teasing and when one consults a map of the region, one finds traces of a place called Deception Bay, about fifty kilometers north of the capital of Queensland. A very bad omen, a posteriori, for a French women’s football team eliminated on penalties (0-0, 7-6 on pens), which suffered one of the biggest disappointments in its history.
Saturday at the Brisbane stadium, an enclosure built on the site of the city’s first cemetery in the 19the century, Les Bleues once again bury their illusions of world semi-finals. They who delivered a courageous match and had victory within reach. “Fate chose Australia. It’s a shame for us to go home”summarizes the French coach, Hervé Renard, fatalistic.
After 2015 and 2019, the France team again gave in before the last four. The nose in bulk following a shock with an opponent, Eugénie Le Sommer expresses this vertigo of a defeat in which one does not believe: “I felt we were capable of winning, I believed in it until the end and it’s even more difficult to lose when you believed in it so much. »
At the end of a close match, extra time and an unbreathable penalty shootout, where each side had several match points, Cortnee Vine transformed the seventh Australian penalty, synonymous with qualification for the host country and tricolor tears. Like those of vice-captain Grace Geyoro, very marked after the match: “It hurts a lot to lose at this stage of the competition. ». Regrets amplified by the feeling of having given everything. “We fought, we defended and we played in front of an entire nation, but we went all the way. This group, I have nothing to reproach him for. »
“If we win, I’m the king of the world, tonight, I’m nothing”
From immense joy to immeasurable sadness, there are sometimes only a few centimeters, those who did not allow Solène Durand – who entered the game especially for the penalty shootout one minute from the end – to offer the victory at Les Bleues on Katrina Gorry’s sixth decisive attempt.
The third tricolor goalkeeper came within a hair’s breadth of being the unexpected heroine of this meeting. She fended off two Australian shots, including a crucial fist save against Clare Hunt who had the chance to send the Matildas through to the semi-finals. “It hits the pole [sur la 5e tentative australienne], then we say it’s for us. Then Solène stops another one, we tell ourselves again that it will be for us. Once, twice, the third, it goes to the bottom for Australia”rewinds Captain Wendie Renard.
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