ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

--- CONTENT ---
This article is about the French national football team of women at the 2015 World Cup in Canada. This was France’s third World Cup participation after 2003 and 2011. The World Cup also served as a qualification for the European teams for the football tournament at the 2016 Olympic Games, where Europe has three starting places.

Qualification

The French women achieved the following results in the European Qualification Group 7:

Kazakhstan – France 0:4 and 0:7Austria – France 1:3 and 1:3Bulgaria – France 0:10 and 0:14France – Hungary 4:0 and 4:0Finland – France 0:2 and 1:3

Despite the supposedly clear lead of the Bleues in the final classification, they had only finally qualified on the penultimate match day, because against Finland – which was only three points behind – France played only at the very end, first with the Scandinavians. With their victory there, however, they were not able to catch up before the return leg.

France scored 54 goals for Gaëtane Thiney (13), Marie-Laure Delie (9), Eugénie Le Sommer (7), Wendie Renard (5), Camille Abily, Élise Bussaglia and Louisa Nécib (4 each), Élodie Thomis (3), Sabrina Delannoy, Amandine Henry, Laura Georges and Amel Majri (1 each); There was also an own goal of the Hungarian Angéla Smuczer.

World Cup preparation

After France had twice only finished fourth in its last participations in the major tournaments (World Cup 2011, Olympic Games 2012) and had even been eliminated in the quarter-finals at the European Championship 2013, the national association and coach Philippe Bergeroo had spent as a goal for this World Cup the achievement of a podium placement. For this, the Bleues have competed in advance as often as possible against other particularly strong women. They started in June 2014, when they measured themselves on the American continent with Brazil (0:0) and the USA (0:1 and 2:2). The next opponents were Germany’s women (October 2014, 2-0 away success) as well as at the end of November in front of a domestic audience in New Zealand (2-1 victory, mostly with the “second suit”) and again in Brazil (2-0 in front of over 11,000 spectators in Stade Gerland). In February 2015 there was another show of strength with the US women (2-0 success in front of almost 16,000 visitors at the Stade du Moustoir, which has an artificial turf like the World Cup stadiums), two months later with World Cup host Canada (1-0). A few days before the World Cup group draw agreed game against England, however, was cancelled shortly before Christmas 2014 in mutual interest.

In addition, in March 2015, the French women refrained from defending their title in the Cyprus Cup, but reported for the more heavily occupied Algarve Cup, where “the French World Cup co-favorite” lost the final against the USA with 0-2 after wins against the hosts (1:0), Denmark (4:1) and World Champion Japan (3:1) – the first defeat after