Jean-Baptiste Sarrazin, with AFP / Photo credit: TORU HANAI / GETTY IMAGES ASIAPAC / Getty Images via AFP
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9:29 p.m., June 21, 2023
The French volleyball team continues its preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In Orléans, the Blues will play their second phase of 2023 Nations League matches. Matches to test themselves according to tricolor striker Kévin Tillie, present in the program “Europe 1 Sport”.
A year and a half after the Olympic title in Tokyo and a year from the Paris 2024 Games, the French volleyball team finds itself in Orléans, on the occasion of the League of Nations, an audience that the Federation (FFVB) intends to build loyalty and boost thanks to the double Olympics effect. Special guest of the show Europe 1 Sports (live every evening from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Europe 1), the receiver-attacker of the Blues Kévin Tillie wants to use this meeting to prepare for the big deadlines to come. The League of Nations “is not one of the objectives of the summer. We are here to prepare for a fairly long summer and also the Paris 2024 Olympic Games”, declared the volleyball player at the microphone of Céline Géraud.
“Difficult matches”
The Blues had not played in competition in France since Euro 2019 (co-organized with Belgium, the Netherlands and Slovenia) and the FFVB absolutely wanted to end these almost four years of absence, partly due to the Covid, before the big meeting of Paris 2024. Part of the world’s gratin is therefore gathered until Sunday at the CO’Met d’Orléans, inaugurated in January and where the Blues will face Argentina (Wednesday), Cuba ( Friday), Canada (Saturday) then Brazil (Sunday). For the closing fireworks against the Auriverde, the 8,000 seats have already been sold and the Federation plans to sell more along the passageway (standing).
“It will be difficult matches. But it will be beautiful to see. We are in a great venue so we are very happy to be there and I hope we will show the public a good show”, said projected Kévin Tillie in Europe 1 Sports. The Blues started this League of Nations with three defeats against a victory. A meager record, however, justified by the striker of the Blues: “We started the first week with a slightly reorganized group, with a lot of players at rest. And there, little by little, we find ourselves with a few executives who come back. We will try to level up little by little.”
Goal 2024 Olympics
Kévin Tillie does not hide it, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be the priority of the Blues. A competition that should mark the end of an era for Kévin Tillie and his teammates. The tricolor striker, who will be 32 next year, risks performing his last competition with the national team in Paris. “I’m starting to have a little family with a three-year-old little girl and the summers are starting to get really tough and you can be away from family. So I think that’s going to be the last,” he said. In Europe 1 Sports.