France one win away from defending Olympic title at Paris 2024. The defending champions gave no chance to Italy in the semifinals and will meet Poland in the gold medal match.
France‘s dream of successfully defending the Olympic title they won three years ago in Tokyo in front of their home fans at the Paris 2024 Games is as close to becoming reality as it’s ever been as Les Bleus (The Blues, in French) overcame the penultimate obstacle standing in their way, triumphing in the semifinals on Wednesday.
Playing at the South Paris Arena 1 in front of over 10,000 fans, with the vast majority supporting them since the starting serve, the defending champions took world champions Italy down with an emphatic 3-0 (25-20, 25-21, 25-21) victory that took them back to the Olympic gold medal match.
France will play Poland in the all-European Paris 2024 final, which is scheduled to start at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT) on Saturday. Italy will face the United States for bronze on Friday, at 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT).
“This is amazing,” star outside hitter Earvin Ngapeth reacted. “We came into this match saying that we needed a perfect performance to win and, to be honest, this was actually beyond perfect. We knew that even two sets down they wouldn’t give up and just kept pushing. The fans were a big part of it. With them on our side, everything is easier. In the final, we need to do as we did today. We’ll prepare well and try to deliver another performance like this.”
It will be the second major duel between French and Polish in just over a month as at the start of July the two national teams met in the Volleyball Nations League 2024 semifinals, with the Olympic champions coming out on top in the tie-breaker in Poland’s homecourt Łódź.
Set to make just their second appearance in a gold medal match in the Games, the French could become the third nation to successfully defend a men’s Olympic title and the first in 36 years – the former USSR did it first, winning in Tokyo 1964 and Mexico City 1968, while the United States did the same in Los Angels 1984 and Seoul 1988.
They could also be the fourth team to celebrate a gold medal in front of their home fans, joining the former USSR (Moscow 1980), the United States (Los Angeles 1984) and Brazil (Rio 2016).
France’s squad at Paris 2024 has ten players who won gold in Tokyo three years ago.
Italy, on the other hand, will play for their seventh medal, having won three bronzes and three silvers in seven semifinal appearances to date.
The victory also moved the teams in the FIVB World Ranking as while the French collected 14.30 points and gained three spots, going from fifth to second with 361.78, the Italians moved in the opposite direction, going from second to third, now with 359.17.