Italy key player:<\/strong> Italy love to run the ball from all corners of the pitch, and winger Aura Muzzo is that attitude personified. Named in the Six Nations 2025 Team of the Championship, her ability to run through defences as often as she does around them makes Muzzo a handful for France’s defensive line.<\/p>\nWhat they said<\/p>\n
France co-captain, Manae Feleu:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you play a World Cup, you don\u2019t know if you\u2019ll ever get another chance. An athlete\u2019s career has highs and lows, and opportunities like this don\u2019t always come back around. So my advice is: enjoy everything \u2013 time off, training, matches \u2013 give it 100% so you have no regrets later.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do talk about it, though it depends on the girls. It\u2019s not on the table at every meal, but I\u2019ve spoken to a few of them and of course they\u2019re curious, they want to know what it was like.\u201d<\/p>\n
France co-head coach, Ga\u00eblle Mignot:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed to arrive and feel it, to really sense that the World Cup is starting. You prepare, but until you set foot here it doesn\u2019t feel real.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re finding our feet. The Opening Ceremony made it clear what\u2019s coming, even if our hotel is in a quiet spot. When the girls went into Exeter on their day off, they felt it: this is a big event, and the scale of it hit home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re aligned with the players: everyone knows last week\u2019s performance didn\u2019t reflect our preparation or the work of the last few years. The group is determined, and that defeat [against England] has fired them up to show who they really are.”<\/p>\n
Italy head coach Fabio Roselli:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is great, there is a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm and we are very excited to start the World Cup and we are very happy to start against a strong team like France. Everything is going well, we are aware that it will be a tough game but we will try to play our best and do it for 80 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know France and France knows Italy as well so I think we tried to imagine and generate what scenario we will be in on Saturday during the match. We have imagined how France will play the game, we know their physicality in the collisions, we know that they will like to break the game as soon as possible and at the same time Italy too, maybe in a different way we like to break the game. When we try to do this and make it more comfortable for the squad, we know we are doing it in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Italy prop Sara Seye:<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I do expect France to come physical, we\u2019ve met them every year (in the Six Nations) and I think the last game we played against them was a good game, a close game, so I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s going to be like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is on the table, cards are going to be played, but they\u2019re going to come physical, and we\u2019re ready for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very excited, I\u2019m very proud and thankful for the coaches that have selected me, but I\u2019m also very anxious because you have to prove that you are ready to be there. It\u2019s always a good amount of pressure and excitement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France are ranked fourth in the world but have come into the tournament on the back of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,661],"class_list":{"0":"post-363239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-text"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115069287394983747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}