France’s under-21s are going to the 2027 Euros. G\u00e9rald Baticle’s side beat Luxembourg 3-2 in Orl\u00e9ans on Saturday evening and booked their place at the tournament, to be staged in Albania and Serbia. A point would have been enough. They took three, in a game that nearly slipped away from them.<\/p>\n
After leading 2-0, France had a man sent off and Luxembourg levelled at 2-2 soon after. \u201cAt 2-0 a game is never over,\u201d Baticle told L’\u00c9quipe. \u201cThat is what happened with the red card and above all with the goal that followed it.\u201d France went back in front from a counter-attack and then a corner, with the goals coming from Steve Ngoura and Mathys Tel, who came off the bench to score the winner.<\/p>\n
The qualification rewards a campaign without defeat: a 1-1 draw in Iceland, a 2-0 win in Estonia, 5-1 in Luxembourg in the first leg. Switzerland await on Tuesday for the final round of matches. \u201cThe pride of validating the good run we have been on for two years. We are unbeaten, we still have one game left and we manage to qualify,\u201d Baticle said after the match.<\/p>\n
The bad news of the night is Jean-Matt\u00e9o Bahoya’s ankle. The Leeds United player went off in the 37th minute, replaced by Tel, and faces further examinations. \u201cI cannot tell you exactly what he has. There will be further examinations, but it is the ankle,\u201d Baticle told Foot Mercato. He may leave the player with his club, as happened with Ethan Mbapp\u00e9, Senny Mayulu and goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen, out with a hamstring injury, all left at the disposal of their respective clubs. In goal, Baticle was weighing Mathieu Patouillet (Brest) against Issiaka Tour\u00e9 (Aubagne), with Mathys Niflore (Toulouse) joining the squad.<\/p>\n
Before the game, the coach had already described the schedule that wears this squad down: \u201cThere is not really a typical eleven on a run like this, so close together. It is like a tournament, we play every four days, so there is little recovery.\u201d On Tuesday against Switzerland, France can finish qualifying without having lost a match, with or without Bahoya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
G\u00e9rald Baticle’s France U21 beat Luxembourg 3-2 in Orl\u00e9ans on Saturday and booked their place at the 2027 U21 European Championship in Albania and Serbia. Jean-Matt\u00e9o Bahoya, who went off injured in the first half, is a doubt for Tuesday’s final qualifier against Switzerland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph-image-id":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter-image-id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ba_sport":[],"class_list":["post-4522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n