Rennes - Évian : the Rennais do their mea-culpa

On Saturday evening, Frédéric Antonetti had had a somewhat violent reaction to the criticism from Evian against the refereeing of M. Moreira. The players from Savoie and their manager, Bernard Casoni, had expressed their disagreement with the official’s decision to give a penalty against Sorlin, with the absence of a sanction against Montaño on Laquait’s injury, and with the absence of a penalty following the dismissal of Kana-Biyik.
_In reaction, the Rennes manager had criticised the tactics of his opponents. “Évian will have to play a bit more football if they are to win games, Antonetti affirmed. They decided to come with two lines of four in their penalty area. When you do this choice, you create the possibility of an incident. This could have been a paying choice, but they can’t come and complain!”

After hearing these declarations from Frédéric Antonetti, Évian president Patrick Trotignon reacted violently in L’Équipe. «These words are disrespectful, even insulting against the club […] and the players, he regretted. Antonetti permits himself to judge the way we play, but this isn’t his problem, we play with the means we have. He has got the sixth budget in France, we have the eighteenth”.”There are several categories of people in football, and Antonetti would be doing quite well when it comes to the cry-babies category, Trotignon continued. If he had a match like we had […] he would have used a pallet of handkerchiefs. We are not complaining, […] but we ask for a little bit of respect”.

Without waiting for Trotigon’s reaction, Antonetti had already made an effort to calm the controversy, explaining to L’Équipe that he “wished to apologise” to the club from Savoie, “since [his] words went further than [his] thoughts”, and assuring he didn’t wish to “hurt or insult the people who work for Évian Thonon-Gaillard and their fans”.

As in an effort to bury the war axe, Bertrand Laquait – who underwent an operation at the Hospital of Rennes to reduce a shin fracture – has received the visit of his Rennes counterpart Benoît Costil and of Victor Hugo Montaño, in the presence of a photograph present to witness and immortalise the scene. According to his words quoted in a press release published by the Stade Rennais, the Colombian striker presented his excuses to Laquait who accepted them.