The year 2024 has just closed. The conclusion of an extremely rich period, marked by annual events such as Roland-Garros or the Tour de France, but also by the Euro football tournament and especially by the Paris Games.
What will the year 2025 look like in the world of sport? With the handball world championships in January, the women's football Euro in July or the world athletics championships in September, there are many questions to ask as we approach 2025. Here are some of them .
Without Karabatic, can the Blues du handball regain the roof of the world?
2017. It has now been eight years since the French team was last world champion. A short eternity for the Blues, accustomed to winning almost everything with four world titles in five editions between 2009 and 2017. Reigning European champions, the French missed their 2024 meeting with elimination in the quarter-finals at the Olympics from Paris.
From January 14, the Blues launch a new life, without Nikola Karabatic, now retired, at the World Cup, which takes place in Croatia, Denmark and Norway. They will have a very affordable preliminary group with Austria, Qatar and Kuwait to get started. Before going to win their seventh world title?
Will Novak Djokovic win a 25th Grand Slam?
What remains for Novak Djokovic to accomplish? Not much anymore. By winning the Olympics, the 37-year-old Serbian went for the last flagship title that he was missing, he who had bet his entire season on it.
Tennis (M) – Novak Djokovic: “The most important match of my life”
Olympic champion after four failures in previous editions, Novak Djokovic has now won all the biggest trophies in tennis and looks back on the emotion he felt when winning this gold medal for his country.
For the first time since 2017, he did not win any Grand Slam during the year and therefore remains stuck at 24 units, as many as Margaret Smith Court. Now coached by Andy Murray, will Novak Djokovic become the only record holder, men and women combined, at the end of the Australian Open, his garden where he has already won 10 times, and which begins on January 12 ?
Can the return of Antoine Dupont lead the French XV to the second Grand Slam of the Galthié era?
There is definitely a French XV with him, and without him. Having set out to live the Olympic dream with the French rugby sevens team, Antoine Dupont resumed his good habits with the French XV during the fall tour, with three victories.
At the top of his art, whether in Blue or with Stade Toulouse, the scrum-half will begin, from January 31 against Wales, his objective for the year 2025: the Six Nations Tournament. Will he be able to bring the Blues to a second Grand Slam after that of 2022?
Will Kylian Mbappé finally win the Champions League?
Will he finally succeed? By joining Real Madrid this summer, Kylian Mbappé had put all the chances on his side of winning his first Champions League. If his start was difficult, between injuries, difficulty adapting and lack of confidence, the Frenchman finished 2024 better, and can therefore dream of a much better second half of the season.
Before becoming the strong man of the White House until the C1 title? Perhaps, but we will already have to ensure qualification for the play-offs, while Real is, on January 1, only in 20th place (24 teams are qualified for the next round).
Finalists at the Olympics, will the Bleues du basketball win the Euro after 16 years of waiting?
Two bronze and five silver medals. This is the record of the French women's basketball team at the Euro since its last title in 2009. Valériane Ayayi's teammates stumble each time on the last step, but in 2025, that could well change.
At that moment: the cruel defeat of the French women's basketball team
How cruel this defeat of the French women's basketball team was. We bring you back to life the match of the Bleues who lost their Olympic final by only a small point against the USA at the Paris 2024 Games.
Finalists at the Paris Olympics, they failed, only half a foot on the line of Gabby Williams, to stop the domination of the Americans, undefeated since 1992. Under the leadership of Jean-Aimé Toupane, they found in 2024 a real defensive identity, and are advancing among the big favorites for the European title. The competition will open on June 19 between Belgium, Italy, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Can Jonas Vingegaard upset Tadej Pogacar?
Whether on the Tour de France or on the classics, Tadej Pogacar has taken control of the year 2024, achieving one of the greatest seasons in the history of cycling. At 26, the Slovenian reigns supreme. Who can stop him from doing it again in 2025? Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic remain outsiders, but they seem, for different reasons, too far from Pogacar's level.
The only one capable of upsetting him remains Jonas Vingegaard, who stole two Tours de France from him in 2022 and 2023. Finally recovered from his injuries, the Dane will start 2025 in great shape, and he should cross swords in July with the Slovenian. To prevent him from going for a fourth Tour which would bring him closer to the greatest?
Will Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt win the Tour de France?
The announcement of his return to the road raised high hopes. Having just been crowned Olympic mountain bike champion, Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt announced that she would return to the professional peloton after a five-year break. In 2025, the Frenchwoman will work for three years at Visma-Lease a bike. And she announced that she was aiming for nothing less than victory in the Tour de France this summer.
Mountain biking: the podium and the Marseillaise for Pauline Ferrand-Prévot
Relive the immense emotion of the new Olympic cross-country mountain bike champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot during her podium and the Marseillaise.
The one who finished second in the Giro in 2014 will have a lot to do, and in particular against a… French team, GDF-Suez, which attracted Juliette Labous and especially Demi Vollering, winner of the Tour de France in 2023.
Will the French women's football team win a first title?
The French team is still chasing its first major title. Fourth in the 2011 World Cup, semi-finalist in Euro 2022, the Blues came close this year, failing in the final of the Nations League against Spain.
During Euro 2025, which will begin on July 2, Wendie Renard's teammates will have the opportunity to take the final step. But the obstacles will be numerous, starting in the group stage with the “group of death” in the company of England and the Netherlands, the last two winners, as well as Wales.
Will there be a second Parisian club in Ligue 1 in August?
1990. This is the last year where two Ile-de-France clubs coexisted in the first division, with PSG and Racing. A 35-year drought, rare for a European capital. Will Paris FC, recently bought by the Arnault family, manage to take the elevator back to PSG?
Long leader of Ligue 2, Maxime Lopez's club ceded the throne to Lorient to end the year but remains very well placed after 16 days to finally join the elite. Will we see a Paris derby next year in Ligue 1?
Can Léon Marchand equal the record for individual World Championship titles?
He is the French star of this year 2024. With his four Olympic titles, unheard of in a single edition for a Tricolore, Léon Marchand has moved into another dimension. After his withdrawal from the World Championships in the short course, he will tackle, from July 11 to August 3, 2025, those in the long course, where he already has five titles.
Swimming (M): the secrets of Léon Marchand’s success
Since a young age, Léon Marchand has been around the pools. A look back at the construction of the French prodigy, who had to emigrate to the United States to improve his skills.
In Singapore, the Frenchman will try to equal Michael Pelps' record (in Melbourne in 2007) of five individual titles in a single edition. The Frenchman should compete in four different 200m events (freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and medley) as well as the 400m medley, for which he has held the world record since the Fukuoka World Championships in 2023. By adding a or several relays, the harvest could be immense for the Toulouse resident who will celebrate his 23rd birthday next May.
Will Cyréna Samba-Mayela be the first French athletics world champion since 2003?
Eunice Barber. Here is the last French athletics world champion. It was in Paris, in 2003. It has therefore been 22 years since a Tricolore succeeded the long jumper. Can Cyréna Samba-Mayela do it?
Cyréna Samba-Mayela, the surprise silver medal in the 100m hurdles
Cyréna Samba-Mayela, the surprise silver medal in the 100m hurdles
(France 2)
European champion, and above all Olympic vice-champion in the 100m hurdles in Paris in 2024, the Francilienne will undoubtedly be the Frenchwoman closest to gold from September 13, in Tokyo.
Will Ferrari be crowned in F1 with the arrival of Lewis Hamilton?
This is one of the biggest transfers in the history of Formula 1. Lewis Hamilton, 18 seasons and seven world championship titles (a record) at Mercedes, has chosen to move to the enemy in 2025. Here he is at Ferrari, in a marriage that few would have imagined.
But the Briton is now 39 years old, and he could not do better than seventh in the drivers' standings (with two Grand Prix victories all the same) at the end of the previous year. Alongside Charles Leclerc, will he be the one who will allow the Prancing Horse to find a world champion driver since Kimi Räikkönen in 2007 or a constructors' title which has eluded him since 2008, and which he missed this year for 14 little points?
