Laure Boulleau and Élise Bussaglia, former teammates in the French women’s team, recount their crazy evenings of the time.
The times are changing. A few years before the Corinne Deacon era, with a French team immersed in a deleterious atmosphere, or even the terrible Kheira Hamraoui-Aminata Diallo affair, we obviously knew how to have fun with the Blues. Élise Bussaglia and Laure Boulleau evoke sacred evenings spent in the tricolor selection more than 10 years ago, under the orders of Bruno Bini, coach from 2007 to 2013.
Les Bleues had celebrated qualification for the 2011 World Cup particularly well, with a victory in Italy (2-3), in September 2010. Bussaglia recounts in The Team: “ We were allowed to drink a little alcohol but, with several players, we clearly abused it. We stayed at the hotel, the staff told us to take it easy, but we were way too happy. Bruno had closed his eyes, he had gone to bed before it got out of hand (laughs)”. Bussaglia had shaken the nets, just like Gaëtane Thiney and Sonia Bompastor.
Boulleau: “The other memories are quite vague”
The following year, at the 2011 World Cup in Germany, EDF Women had reached the semi-finals of the competition only to be eliminated by the United States (3-1), before losing the match for the 3rd place against Sweden (2-1). Which did not prevent this happy group led by Sandrine Soubeyrand (a 37-year-old captain at the time) from marking the occasion.
And Laure Boulleau doesn’t remember everything…” We had a big party in Paris when we got back, we had really drunk a lot. I remember we went to the Baron (a nightclub in the 8th arrondissement), but the other memories are quite fuzzy », throws (also to The Team) the left side who became a consultant on Canal +, who was then 24 years old.