With eight straight wins this season, the French team opens against England on Saturday. Throughout their history, Les Bleues have never managed to advance beyond the semi-finals at the Euro, just as they have at the World Cup or the Olympics.
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"We're entering this Euro as a challenger, which doesn't mean we can't go there with a lot of ambition." Even before setting foot in Switzerland for Euro 2025, held from July 2 to 27, Les Bleues coach Laurent Bonadei refused to see the French team labeled as a favorite to win, preferring instead that of an ambitious outsider. The president of the French Football Federation (FFF), Philippe Diallo, has set the semi-final stage as the minimum objective.
"In 1985, Mike Tyson was a challenger. As the fights progressed, he positioned himself as the favorite. To be a favorite, you have to have won. But France has never won yet," the coach said on June 5, the day the list was unveiled, justifying his choice to position his trophy-less, world-ranked team as a challenger.
The road ahead promises to be anything but easy, with France placed in Group D, the "pool of death," along with England, the Netherlands, and Wales. "We're in a very difficult group with the last two winners of the Euro [England in 2022 and the Netherlands in 2017], so we're going to go in with a lot of conviction and without shame," Laurent Bonadei recalled on May 22, shortly before Les Bleues' final two matches in the Nations League group stage. With this tough group, the Real Madrid player is aware that the key for Les Bleues will be to "be focused" on themselves. "If we can't manage ourselves, to know what we really want, we know that it can be really difficult," the lucid midfielder confided to franceinfo: sport. To compensate for these weaknesses, Laurent Bonadei called in mental coach Thomas Sammut at the end of September, who notably worked on swimmers Florent Manaudou and Léon Marchand.
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