Women's Eurobasket: The French team is "adapting" to a "complicated" preparation, according to Céline Dumerc
With one month to go until the next Women's EuroBasket, Les Bleues manager Céline Dumerc has announced that the French team is adapting its coaching staff due to the absence of several of its key players.
The French national basketball team's management is "adapting" to its preparation for the Euro in a month, which it knew would be "complicated" by the absence or withdrawal of several players involved in the WNBA, the North American championship, general manager Céline Dumerc said on Monday.
The Olympic runners-up began their preparations on Monday in Reims for the competition (June 18-29 in Piraeus, Greece), which they aim to win for the first time since 2009, but are without seven players from the expanded 25-man squad called up by coach Jean-Aimé Toupane. Gabby Williams, France's best player last summer at the Paris Games, Dominique Malonga, also an Olympic medalist, and Carla Leite have withdrawn from the Euro to focus on the WNBA season, which has just begun.
Four others, Marine Johannès (New York), Marième Badiane (Minnesota), Janelle Salaün (Golden State), and Leïla Lacan (Connecticut), all present at the Paris Olympics, are still with their WNBA franchises. And the French women's staff—faced with vague and " à la carte " WNBA regulations based on the statutes and franchises, according to Dumerc—doesn't know when it will be able to count on them.
" Things are being put in place (with the franchises), but I can't tell you right now that they'll be there on a certain day at a certain time ," the general manager explained. " They'll definitely join us, but when? It depends on the discussions they have with their franchise, the pressure they're under. We want to see them again, but we're a bit dependent on their commitment to their franchise ," added the former French point guard and captain.
Does she really have no doubts about the presence of Johannès, Salaün, Badiane, and Lacan at the Euro? " As long as I haven't seen them with my own eyes in the jersey, in France... there are always doubts. But based on the direct discussions we've had with agents and franchises, they have expressed their desire to come. I have confidence."
The French team will face Turkey on Sunday in Reims and then Belgium on June 3 and 4 in Brest, the only matches in their preparation for the Euro, a reduced schedule dictated once again by the circumstances. " We did what we could with all the uncertainties we had," Dumerc emphasized.
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