France’s men finally got a point on the board in Wednesday evening’s dramatic draw against Egypt, coming from behind to snatch a draw and keep their hopes of retaining the gold medal on home court alive.
Goalkeeper Remi Desbonnet produced a big second-half performance with a 35% save rate, laying the foundation for a late revival.
“We’re alive in the competition now that we’ve got our first point. We have to win our last two games to reach the quarter-finals and then it’s a whole other competition, we all know it,” says Desbonnet, who took us into the team’s mindset since their surprise loss in round 2 against Norway.
“It’s been a tough 48 hours and it feels good to finally have a point. We had two choices, to be selfish and have each player look after himself or to stay together.
“We decided to stick together and it’s been so intense, it’s the main story for us now and we hope it will be a great one by the end of the tournament.”
Full faith in French support
Desbonnet is always a keeper who feeds off the energy from the crowd and was visibly hyped as the anxious sounds of Arena Paris Sud turned into excitement as France turned the tide.
“Something happened with the crowd in this game and I hope they will push like this from now, in fact I don’t doubt it. We have our first point, now let’s go.”
Next up for France is a must-win game against group B’s bottom side Argentina, before Sunday’s final preliminary round clash with Hungary, which is likely to determine their quarter-final fate.