“We still have room for improvement,” said Laurent Bonadei, the assistant coach of Les Bleues.

He followed Hervé Renard with his eyes closed. After Saudi Arabia, Laurent Bonadei this time accompanies the coach with the famous white shirt on the bench of the French women’s team. After a World Cup full of hope, but stopped, once again, at the quarter-final stage after the defeat on penalties against Australia (0-0, 6 tab to 7), the former coach of the PSG youth teams looked back on his first months with the Blues.

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Observations, expectations, areas for progress: Laurent Bonadei spoke at length before the French women’s team’s match against Norway on Tuesday October 31 in the Nations League.

Franceinfo: Laurent Bonadei, you have been supporting Hervé Renard since last April, how has your experience as assistant coach of the France team been?

Laurent Bonadei: Personally, I take great pleasure in coaching girls on a daily basis. I didn’t expect to have such a positive feeling, they surprise me. When we leave the world of boys, a bit like me when I left training by going to the A [Laurent Bonnadei a été de longues années à la formation du PSG, participant à l’éclosion de Mike Maignan, Kingsley Coman, Adrien Rabiot ou encore Presnel Kimpembe], we leave our comfort zone. And so we question ourselves, we go into an area that we don’t know inside out. We must surround ourselves well, be able to be interested and understand the mechanisms. With girls, the relationship between coach and player is not the same as with a player. What changes? They are very demanding of feedback [retours], they are more interested and curious for advice. They are very attentive to their performance, they want to know what they did well or did poorly, what the area of ​​progress is. Regarding the sessions, they want to know why, for what purpose, for what objective, it must have meaning.

Are you regaining your role as a trainer?

That’s what I said to a friend recently. I find what I knew at Paris Saint-Germain, where we are training with very high level players, because I was lucky enough to have Rabiot, Kimpembe, Coman and others.

And as they are very high level players, it is even excellence, they have an ego, convictions, but they do not necessarily have certainties. Even executives need to understand and learn things, and as a trainer, this is more appreciable.

Laurent Bonadei

at franceinfo

They believe in themselves, but sometimes, thinking too much is not good. You have to let your instinct, your intuition speak. Don’t doubt in any way. When you’re on the pitch, you have to play, have fun, let go, move forward, win, perform.

Since you have been there, have the players of the French team reached a milestone?

Compared to the first gatherings and what we saw in certain matches – not all – of the World Cup in particular, our desire was to put in place a little more intensity. Getting “closer” to the boys’ game. We saw it against Brazil, against Australia, they were able to do it over 120 minutes. Unfortunately, it didn’t come down to much, with a series of penalties which eliminated us. But I felt that they passed a milestone in the intensity of the races, in the repetition of efforts, in the desire to win the duels and not just be in a game of possession. The idea is to take them a little further in their efforts. If they are able to do this, it is because they are progressing mentally.

In terms of playing identity, is the French team where you want it to be?

We still have room for improvement. From the start, we wanted to use width, to establish relationships on the sides. During the first internship, it was quite visible. A little less during the World Cup, but it’s logical, because the level has risen. In ball releases, we still have progress to make, but it is encouraging for the future, if we did not see any room for improvement, that would be worrying. Each course is an opportunity to address different points. We must be more efficient in changes of pace, manage to move from possession to a little more verticality. In any case, the objective remains the same, which is to win all our matches.