French eyes were teary and their hearts heavy as they took their leave of Manahan Stadium in Surakarta on Saturday evening. Not even in their worst nightmares did they imagine that the final of the FIFA U-17 World Cup Indonesia 2023\u2122 would pan out in the same cruel way as the final of the UEFA European Under-17 Championship they contested six months ago. And yet that is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
Just as in Hungary in June, the French had Germany standing between them and the trophy. While that game ended goalless, this was a thrilling 2-2 draw in which one side dominated before the break and the other after. And when the shootout came around, Les Bleuets took an early advantage, with Paul Argney keeping out Eric Da Silva Moreira\u2019s opening kick, just as he had done against Noah Darvich in Budapest. Then France went and missed three penalties, leaving themselves empty-handed again.\u201cWe can take some pride, but I\u2019ve honestly never felt so frustrated,\u201d the France keeper told FIFA after a shootout in which he heroically denied Paris Brunner to keep his team\u2019s hopes alive, albeit momentarily. \u201cLosing two finals to the same team on penalties\u2026 I just don\u2019t feel like we deserved it, but there you go. They\u2019re mentally stronger than us, but I\u2019m proud of the team all the same, of the spirit we showed. Congratulations to them [Germany].\u201d<\/p>\n
The next best thing to invincible, France had lost only one of their previous 30 games in regulation time, a 3-1 reverse to who else but Germany in the group phase at this year\u2019s Euros. Beaten by the Germans to not one but two trophies in 2023, Les Bleuets will find it hard to put this latest setback behind them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very disappointed for the group because they maybe deserved better, but if it didn\u2019t happen, then it\u2019s because there\u2019s still something missing,\u201d said France coach Jean-Luc Vannuchi, pointing to the hold Germany seem to have over his team. \u201cJust as we did at the Euros, we had chances. We also had a numerical advantage [after Germany’s Winners Osawe was sent off in the 69th minute]. We had opportunities to kill the game off and we didn\u2019t do it. That\u2019s elite sport for you, though.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French eyes were teary and their hearts heavy as they took their leave of Manahan Stadium in Surakarta on Saturday evening. Not even in their worst nightmares did they imagine that the final of the FIFA U-17 World Cup Indonesia 2023\u2122 would pan out in the same cruel way as the final of the UEFA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":913475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-913474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=913474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/913475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=913474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=913474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=913474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}