“I want people to stop asking me: ‘Why haven’t France won anything when you’re one of the best teams in the world?’” Marie-Antoinette Katoto, like all her teammates, has only one dream this summer: to win the Euros.
To do that, though, they have to come to terms with a history of tournament failures, with the most recent one coming at the home Olympics last year, when they were knocked out by Brazil in the quarter-finals. “We have had opportunities and twice failed to win it at home in France. We have to have the humility to admit that,” admits Sakina Karchaoui, one of the team’s vice-captains, referring also to the 2019 World Cup on home soil, when they lost to the USA in the quarter-finals.