The French police team in Nîmes before the Euro in June

They are happy and all smiles, at the time of the souvenir photo in front of the arenas. In blue, the sixteen girls of the French national police women's Football team, in red, the players of Nîmes Football Fémininin. But this Wednesday evening, they will face each other on the pitch of the Marcel-Rouvière stadium. “We are in Nîmes for the first time on a preparation course for the European Championship”, explains Michaël Goncalves, their trainer. And tomorrow Thursday, they will play at 8 p.m. at the Jean-Bouin stadium. Objective : “Integrate two new stories and test game strategies. I will give my list of players at the end of March”he adds.

“Balancing work and training”

“The difficulty for us is reconciling work and regular training,” explains Céline Chatelain, captain of the team for eight years and police officer in the Paris region. In the France team since 2021, “incredible luck”, Manon Mauguin will return to the field with the Nîmes club in which she played happily for a long time… before being transferred to Lyon.

For Jean-Philippe Nahon, the interdepartmental director of the national police, who came to greet the players, “sport conveys values ​​of cohesion, reactivity and strength which are also ours. It is also useful to be effective in the exercise of our profession…”

“We are one of the outsiders in the competition but we are going for the medal, we have girls who play in division 3”, slips Michaël Goncalves who recalls that, in the three previous championships, France has already finished second twice and fourth once.