Brahimi lets slip French masterplan

France attacking midfielder Yacine Brahimi has targeted a place in the UEFA European Under-19 Championship final and urged his team-mates to seek the Group B victories over Turkey and Spain that would go a long way towards achieving that goal.

Strong belief
The Stade Rennais FC player – his country's five-goal leading scorer in qualifying – struck a wonderful 40th-minute goal in Tuesday's 1-1 opening draw against Serbia but was left with a sour taste in his mouth after Danijel Aleksić equalised shortly afterwards. "Of course, the goal was very important for me because I need to raise my confidence level and obviously scoring helps," Brahimi told uefa.com. "Although I was happy to score there was also sadness because we conceded and that was a blow for the team. We now feel we can beat Spain and Turkey in our next games as we have a lot of belief and the potential to go further in this tournament; in fact our goal is to get to the final."

Mutual respect
Hoping to repeat the heroics of the victorious France team in 2005, Brahimi believes that coach Jean Gallice, capped seven times at senior level, is the perfect man to lead Les Petits Bleus to glory once again. "The coach has a lot of experience and many things to give us especially after he won in 2005," the 19-year-old said. "I knew he was a very good player and a great international. The players all have a lot of respect for him but we feel he has a lot of respect for us in turn. He allows us the freedom to express ourselves and is not the type of coach that makes a player live in a kind of on-field prison. He gives us advice and tells us to show what we can do. This is great for me because I like to play with the ball; I consider myself a technical player. "

Gaining experience
While aware that doing well in Ukraine during this tournament would increase his chances of advancing to the Under-21s, Brahimi – who will be loaned to Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot Auvergne for the coming season – said his immediate goal was just to play as much as possible. "I will try to play a lot during my loan at Clermont," he said. "After that we'll see. Like every player, I want to play for the best clubs and to be in the national team but let's take things step by step." The Paris-born player then gave a wry smile and added: "To play for Barcelona would be nice, one day. Now though, I just want to do well in this competition." France take on Turkey on Friday before meeting Spain in their final group game on Monday.