New Era: Team France Makes a Smooth EuroBasket Start (+28 against Belgium)!
August 28, 2025
Alexandre Lacoste
Interview Frédéric Fauthoux: « A bit of a strange game, but we saw some good things »
French National Team - Coach Frédéric Fauthoux reflects on France's victory against Belgium (92-64) in their first EuroBasket 2025 game.
Photo Credit : FIBA
The French team started their EuroBasket campaign with a 92-64 victory against Belgium. Right after the final buzzer, new head coach Frédéric Fauthoux met with the French press. While describing the game as « a bit strange » due to its rhythm, he was reassured by his team’s attitude and everyone’s involvement.
Frédéric, you’ve just finished your first Euro game with a convincing win (+28). What are your thoughts on this first match?
First, we got the win we wanted. Maybe not exactly the game we wanted, because it was perhaps a bit strange. That’s the impression I got anyway. But I think in terms of what we’re looking for – with our rotations, the intensity we want to produce, flowing offensive play – we saw some good things. And especially, the involvement of all players. That’s going to be one of our biggest strengths. We have many players scoring over 10 points (five players with 10 or more points). It’s a first game. The second one is coming soon. We’ll prepare for it.
Were you reassured by the team’s performance today, the intensity, what you produced defensively and collectively?
Yes, absolutely. That’s exactly it. Though we can do better in many areas. So we’ll do better in 48 hours. […] In this sport, you can always improve everything. Both offense and defense. Stopping targeted players, for example.
Everyone scored at least 2 points. Is that satisfying?
Yes, because the ball is moving well. And each player is taking responsibility. That’s what we want.
A word about Bilal’s performance, especially his spectacular double block on Ismael Bako in pure vertical leap.
He’s shown real consistency defensively since the start of preparation, and he showed it again today. It’s the kind of action that energizes the whole group.
[Twitter embed content]
His way of covering ground and being aggressive like that…
These are qualities that almost all French team players have. We need to get stops and be able to run the floor. I hope it will pay off even better throughout the tournament.
[Embedded content about Bilal Coulibaly]
How would you evaluate tonight’s opposition against Belgium? Should we be cautious since they clearly weren’t one of the group’s strongest teams?
I don’t know what other teams in other groups did. But it was still a first game. Of course, this wasn’t Belgium at full strength, they were missing some players. So were we. We needed to win the game and we did. True, the opponent… we couldn’t mess up against them, and we didn’t.
You took many three-point shots (28 out of 62 shots). Was this planned or just what the defense gave you?
The defense, going under pick and rolls, gave us opportunities to shoot from there. So that’s what we took.
The arena was very empty (officially 2,400 spectators), not much happening.
That’s typical of European championships, maybe especially in countries like this. They’ll probably wait for Poland’s games. It doesn’t matter. We’re not here to check if the arena is full or empty. We’re here to play game after game and win as many as possible, at least in this first phase.
« France – Slovenia? An extraordinary player on their side »
Was that part of the strange or weird aspect you mentioned at the start?
No, it was the game’s rhythm that was a bit surprising. But that’s also, I think, what the game produced. They wanted to keep the ball from us for a while. They wanted to have longer possessions. We adapted to that.
Can you tell us a bit about the next game, against Slovenia this Saturday?
We know it will be an important game because it’s Slovenia, because they have an extraordinary player. However, I think we shouldn’t consider some games more important than others. It will be a game against a tougher opponent. So we need to be even better, as I said earlier, in all aspects.
[Image content]
Can you elaborate on the Luka Doncic situation? We all know he lost 15 kilos over the summer. The game will be even more focused around him. How do you approach the matchup against him?
I’m not going to dodge the question. I haven’t discussed this game at all with my staff yet because we didn’t want to overlook today’s opponent. We might do some specific things against him. We’ve watched him in recent games. It’s true that he already dominated the game before and might do so even more now. But tonight’s game will give us lots of information. He’s one of the world’s top three players. It’s impressive. We might not have that kind of player in this European championship. However, I think we can be much stronger collectively. And that’s what we’ll need to do.
Personally, how does it feel to coach and prepare a game plan against one of the world’s top three players?
It reminds me of when I saw his first game with Real Madrid. I watched it with my son and my daughter, Marine. We said to ourselves, hey, this one might be very, very good someday. And he is very, very good (laughs).
In Katowice,
Gabriel Pantel-Jouve est le fondateur et rédacteur en chef de BeBasket, qu’il anime depuis 2010 (sous le nom de Catch & Shoot). Passé par l’Ecole Publique de Journaliste de Tours, puis deux universités en Amérique du Nord, il a pu développer son expertise sur le basket français, de la Ligue Nationale aux divisions amateurs, durant ces 20 dernières années. En parallèle, il est aussi engagé dans le développement de clubs du côté de Montpellier.
Commentaires