They are back in the final. Two days after winning their last preliminary match on Tuesday against Turkey (2-0), the players of the French blind football team qualified for the Paralympic final on Thursday, September 5, after overcoming Colombia (1-0). A meeting that the Blues have not experienced since the London Games in 2012. They returned from that edition with a silver medal around their necks after losing to Brazil (0-3). On Saturday, they will challenge the world champions Argentina to win gold.
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This sport, almost unknown in France, came out of the shadows – like goalball – during this Paralympic fortnight. The players ignited the crowd, in a dream setting, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. As in their first four sessions, they alternated between very loud encouragement and total silence to let the eight visually impaired players (only the goalkeepers are sighted), masks over their eyes, play on the field.
Because on the field, blind footballers, as the French coach, Toussaint Akpweh, calls them, must listen to the ball with bells, the information from the goalkeeper to defend as best as possible, those from the guide who is behind the goal of the opposing team and follow the instructions of the coach. Not to mention the vocal exchanges between them and the « voy » (“I’m going” in Spanish) that every player who wants to get hold of the ball must say. It’s the only way to make his position known to his teammates. A lot of noise, then, and in two languages.
“Every second counts”
“They are above all excellent football players, with all the athletic, technical, mental and tactical qualities that go with it.insists Toussaint Akpweh. But a fifth component is added: information management. When a visually impaired person leaves his house, it is better, for example, for him to concentrate on his sidewalk rather than on the noise of the jackhammer coming from the other side.” Frédéric Villeroux, the captain of this team, adds: “There are between seven and ten pieces of information to manage simultaneously. It’s good to hear all ten, but you have to manage the right one. Otherwise it’s useless.”
This sensory-motor mechanism of information processing is essential for making rapid decisions. “It is certain that we [les non-voyants] we have very fine hearingsays Gaël Rivière, player of the French team. But that is not enough. For example, the faster you tell other players that you have the ball, the faster they know how to position themselves. Similarly, the faster you tell them that you have lost the ball, the faster they understand it, and the faster we adjust the collective strategy. Every second counts and every second lost benefits the opposing team.
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