Euro-2021: Captain Lloris was not enough to save the Blues

Published on : 06/29/2021 – 00:42Modified : 06/29/2021 – 00:46

21 years ago, Fabien Barthez and his international teammates at the time achieved the double: after the 1998 World Cup at home, they won Euro 2000 in Belgium and the Netherlands. Hugo Lloris, goalkeeper and captain of the France team for years, aspired to do the same, three years after the 2018 World Cup won in Russia. Switzerland shattered its dream, Monday, June 28, by eliminating the world champions in the knockout stages of Euro 2021.

A feat before the painful disillusionment

In this spectacular meeting, everything had started badly for the Blues, led from the 15th minute. After the break, the disaster scenario emerged when the referee awarded a penalty to the “Nati”. But that’s where Lloris put on his savior costume, like in 2018.

Faced with Ricardo Rodriguez, the Tottenham goalkeeper jumped on the right side and pushed the ball 2-0 (55 ‘). A milestone feat: the former Lyonnais and Niçois had not postponed a penalty in the French team since October 2012 and a match against Spain. He had lost on the 16 shots suffered since then.

Two minutes after his parade, Karim Benzema freed himself and put France on the right track. Until leaving the road in the last ten minutes, then at the end of extra time and the penalty shootout.

In this famous session, the captain almost sublimated once again against the fourth Swiss shooter, Ruben Vargas. But if he touched the leather, he could not prevent it from going to the bottom of the net. Moments later, his counterpart Yann Sommer had a firm hand to stop Kylian Mbappé’s strike and get the Blues out of the Euro.

“It’s painful, even more on a penalty shootout or it becomes a lottery”, commented Hugo Lloris hot, at the microphone of TF1. The goalkeeper did not seek to mitigate the failure of the Habs. “You can have regrets. By leading 3-1 … In recent years, we were able to close the shop,” he squeaked. The blue defense is, in fact, appeared very feverish on the lawn of Bucharest.

“Everyone expected more, we were the first”

The player who played his 129th international match on Monday did not want to “look for excuses” either as the temperature or the physical problems of the group: “When we enter the field, we go with the mental, the physical , whatever it takes to be successful. “

Even a few moments after the defeat, Hugo Lloris measures the extent of the failure: “We are the reigning world champions. Being eliminated in the round of 16 is not good. Everyone expected more, we the first. It is played on penalties. We will have to digest this disappointment. “

Almost 16 years after his professional debut, the goalkeeper is lucid. “It’s football, that’s how we like it. When it doesn’t go the way we want, it hurts,” he analyzes. The France team will now have to re-mobilize and draw conclusions from this failure, because the World Cup in Qatar is only a year and a half away. And obviously, 34-and-a-half-year-old Hugo Lloris will still be around for the rest of the playoffs and, hopefully, to defend the crown. “From next season, we will have to get back to work,” he said.