Mentally shaken in the first leg of the Ligue A final by the Mariannes 92 of Levallois Paris Saint-Cloud, the Neptunes de Nantes need to rediscover their identity if they are to win their first French championship in the second leg of the final, at home this Friday (8pm).
"Tuesday was Paris against... something..." Amandine Giardino was smiling on Thursday, but the Neptunes captain is still struggling to explain her team's defeat at the Palais des Sports Marcel-Cerdan in Levallois. The Mariannes de Levallois Paris Saint-Cloud (3-0) quickly overcame the first leg of their final, giving themselves two chances to win their first title: by beating the Nantes team again this Friday evening at Mangin-Beaulieu (8pm), or by beating them, in the event of defeat, in the golden set (in 15 points).
The Neptunes, favourites after dominating the regular season (21 v.-3 d.), ahead of the Franciliennes (19 v.-5 d.), were far from their usual standards, as Bianca Cugno and her team-mates tirelessly unfolded their game plan. It's the first time this has happened to us, I'd have preferred it if it had been at a different time," laments Giardino, also libero for the French team. Paris played a good match, but they played at the level and in the manner expected of them. They never gave up, and it's also the first time we've had a team like that in front of us, who continue to play their game even when trailing by four points (9-13 in the first set). On our side, we made some unforced errors, and mentally we weren't up to it. In the last set, we exploded (25-22, 25-23, 25-19)."
"If we finish on the same note as the first leg, we'll have regrets" - Amandine Giardino, Nantes libero and captain
Nantes had two training sessions and as many video analyses to try and understand and rediscover the face they had shown all season, already marked by a Challenge Cup (C3) final, lost to the Italian team Novara, and a Coupe de France victory. Here again, the solution seems to lie more in the mental side of things, in addition to a few technical adjustments, in attack or to counter the missiles of the Mariannes' Argentinean point guard, Cugno (19 points scored).
"After the first set on Tuesday, I told the girls 'this isn't our team, we're not having any fun'," says the 29-year-old from Var. Given that nothing was working, we should have played the fun card more. If on Friday (today) they're better than us, and we play our best volleyball, no worries. But we've had such a great season, where we've had so much fun, with a crazy team that people love, that if we end up playing the same game, we'll have regrets.
Isn't this unsuccessful first part of the final the price to pay for what has made the Nantes team so successful this season, with an extremely close-knit team and an ideal feeling with Cesar Hernandez, their Spanish coach ? It's true that we've been counting down the days for a week now, and a lot of the girls have already had tears in their eyes, or have broken down a little, because we know that this group will never be together again," admits Giardino. But I say to myself that we have to live it to the full! That's if, this Friday, we can put our emotions aside for several hours.