Herve Renard has chose 26 players who will report today at Clairefontaine to prepare the tournament. France will play two friendlies Republic of Ireland away on 06 July and Australia away on 14th of July before the tournament starts.
Here is the full squad:
There are four goalkeepers, eight defenders, eight midfield and six forwards. Herve Renard said Solene Durand with compete with Mylene Chavas for the third GK place. The fourth goalkeeper will travel to Australia in case of an injury as it is a specific position unlike an outfield player.
The big question is who will be the two outfield players that will not travel to Australia. During his press conference, Herve Renard was quite clear that Aissatou Tounkara was behind all the other defenders in the pecking order. As we know she has not had any real playing time with Manchester United this season.
In all logic, we will therefore have Eve Perisset at right-back with Elisa De Almeida as her back-up. The left-backs will be Sakina Karchaoui and Salma Bacha, who will also compete for the left-winger spot. At Centre-back, Captain Wendie Renard, Elisa De Almeida and Estelle Cascarino.
Then you would expect a midfielder to be left out, because with seven defenders only, you would not want to go to Australia with six defenders, if for example Maelle Lakrar another defender at the back of the pecking order was the second players to be released. It would mean a 3-6-8-6 configuration and quite a risk. If you get one injury and one suspension during the tournament, you end up short of defenders.
The midfield list has two defensive midfielders Amandine Henry and Oriane Jean-Francois, that’s one experienced and one up and coming player. There is one deep playmaker in Sandie Toletti. Two box to box players in Grace Geoyro and Laurina Fazer, again one experienced player and one upcoming youngster. Two playmakers Kenza Dali and Lea Le Garrec who has recently come back into the squad after years in the wilderness and one left-winger Amel Majri. It has to be said, should two defenders be left-out of the final squad, it means the coah intends to use either Geyoro or Henry as emergency centre-back solutions.
There are only six forwards in the long list, you would certainly expect all of them to be selected in the final 23. It is interesting to note that two youngsters Vicky Becho and Naomie Feller have been selected ahead of more experienced players and will be used as super-subs during the tournament. I was lucky to see them recently play the Netherlands u-23 away in Almere and they certainly looked good.
The final 23 are likely to be named just before leaving to play the friendly in Dublin. There are probably five or six players on the fringe fighting not to be left out and they have two weeks to convince the staff to take them on the trip to Australia.
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