France’s Dohmen: Pro League Debut Is Just the Start, Qualifying for LA28 Is the Real Test
France are the new boys in the FIH Hockey Pro League, and their coach isn’t pretending otherwise. John-John Dohmen knows exactly what his side are walking into when the season starts on 8 December, and he’s honest about what it will take to survive in it.
“We need to start with a big performance,” Dohmen told the FIH in a pre-season interview published today. “Whatever the result, the most important thing is to put in a great performance right from the start.” He’ll rotate the squad and give new players a chance along the way, which he reckons will be interesting for French hockey and for the FIH alike. New faces, new energy, and a first look at who can handle this level.
Dohmen doesn’t hide what the Pro League means for a team like France. “Playing against the world’s top eight teams is the only way to really improve,” he said, before making a point the FIH might want to hear. There are 10, even 12 teams that could compete at this level, in his view, and a bigger league would make for 12 very strong teams. One year in the competition helps, he said, but it’s not enough to break into the world’s top eight. France need to be here for several consecutive years. That’s the whole point of getting in.
He’s wary of all of them, as he put it, because these are the world’s top eight and they’re definitely ahead of everyone else. But he’s looking forward to it, especially the away games in front of big home crowds. The French players are coming off a World Cup where they put in some good performances but didn’t get the result they wanted, and Dohmen can see they want to show they’re capable of more. Preparation hasn’t been as good as some nations, he admitted, but it’s been solid, and the group is in a good place.
The real test comes later
Look past December and Dohmen’s mind is already on the Olympics. Qualifying, he said, will be extremely difficult. In fact, he thinks it could be harder than doing well at the Games themselves.
“First, the priority will be to arrive at the qualification tournament with everyone fit and in good shape. Then we’ll have to qualify, which I think will be extremely difficult,” he said. “We’ve done the calculations, and that’s more or less where we stand. So, in a way, qualifying could actually be harder than performing well once we get there.”
He puts France’s chances at roughly one in two. Fifty-fifty. But get there, he said, and France will have nothing to lose: young players who will have developed significantly, a squad that will have worked together for three years, and a coaching staff that has been with them throughout. “At that point, we could really achieve something special and get a great result at the Olympics.”
For our money, that’s the right way to look at it. The Pro League season is the shop window, but the qualification tournament is the whole shop. France’s first season among the top eight is about learning how to live at that level, and if Dohmen’s players take the lessons quickly, that fifty-fifty starts to look better than it sounds.
The 2026-27 FIH Hockey Pro League season starts on 8 December.
