A failed tactical gamble?

- Lama at kick-off:
This week-end, the LFP honored players born in French overseas departments (DOM-TOM), for the operation «2011, year of overseas departments », organized in partnership with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
For each match of L1 and L2, a player born in the DOM-TOM was present at kick-off, including David Sommeil, Laurent Robert, Gérard Janvion or Pascal Vahirua. In Lille, Bernard Lama was honoured for this occasion. The Guyanese started his career in mainland France with LOSC (1981-1989), and ended it with Stade Rennes (2000-2001).

- Foulquier, a first match to forget:
This 2nd October was a special date for a young 18 years old Guadeloupean. Right back winger Dimitri Foulquier made his first steps in Ligue 1, and became the club’s first player of the 1993 generation to start at this level. Already retained in the professional group last year, Foulquier also made all the summer preparation with the first team, and gave an assist during the preparation match Rennes-Angers. This year, he is also the captain of the Stade Rennes’ reserve. Eventually, his first match in the top flight had a taste of failure, since Frédéric Antonetti chose to substitute him at half-time. The young right winger had a real baptism of fire, since he was confronted to Eden Hazard and Joe Cole.
Let on the substitutes’ bench at the start of the game, Romain Danzé had to come to the rescue once again. The last three times Frédéric Antonetti decided to let him rest, Danzé finally had to play at least 45 minutes, because of the game’s circumstances. It was already the case against Nancy and Saint-Étienne, where the injuries of Mavinga and Boye forced him to enter the pitch.

- Lille still impregnable:
After breaking its decades of failure in Marseille and then in Sochaux, Stade Rennes hoped to do the same against LOSC. But it didn’t. The last Rennes’ victory in Lille dates from 14th May 1966, on the Henri-Jorris stadium (destroyed in 1975). At this date, Jean-Pierre Darchen, Daniel Rodighiero and Marcel Loncle scored for Rennes, and the future Rennes hero André Guy scored the only goal of Lille.
Since this date, every Rennes’ visit in North has ended with a defeat or a draw, except for two victories in Coupe de France and in Coupe de la Ligue.

- Tettey under the threat of a suspension :
While Kana-Biyik, Mavinga and Féret will be suspended for the next game against Lorient in two weeks, Alexander Tettey is now also under the threat of a future suspension. The Norwegian midfielder took another yellow card in Lille, after a first one in Sochaux. He will therefore be suspended if he receives a new yellow card during the next eight matches (except for the Europa League).
The only other player in the same case is Youssouf Hadji, who received two yellow cards with Nancy at the beginning of the season. He will have to pay attention to his attitude during matches against Lorient, Auxerre and Le Mans (Coupe de la Ligue).

- Discovery for Diarra and Sané :
Suprisingly included in the group retained for the trip in Lille, youngsters Fantamady Diarra and Abdoulaye Sané didn’t make their starts in the top-flight this time, on the contrary of Dimitri Foulquier.
Senegalese forward Sané was finally the “nineteenth man”, and didn’t sit on the substitutes’ bench. Malian international Diarra did, but he wasn’t given an opportunity to enter the game. A good experience, nevertheless, which may leads to real starts in Coupe de la Ligue at the end of October.

- The responsibility lies on Antonetti?
«When a coach changes two players at half-time, this means he made a mistake, that’s all ». This sentence from Frédéric Antonetti could have been said this Sunday, after the match. But he said it on April 9th, after a shameful defeat against Brest (0-2), during which the Rennes’ coach replaced Mandjeck and Lemoine during half-time, to introduce Dalmat and Leroy.
In Lille, Foulquier and Tettey paid the prices of their coach’s tactical shambles, who substituted them at half-time. With a “Red and Black” team better organized during second half-time, what would have been the result if this team started the match? Of course, we will never know. But the gamble to start with Foulquier, to reinforce the defensive midfield and to do without an attacking right winger didn’t work at all.

- Difficult tomorrows...
Rennes has struggled with the succession of matches this season, especially the fact to play games in quick succession on Thursdays and then on Sundays. Since the beginning of the season, championship matches played just after Europa League games didn’t end with good results for Stade Rennes.
The best example, is the defeat in Montpellier (0-4), played just after a match in Belgrade. There is also an average result against Nancy (1-1), just after a trip to Udine and the difficult victory against Caen (3-2, with a particularly difficult second half-time) played just after the second game against Belgrade. The only exception remains the victorious match in Dijon (5-1), which followed a “quiet” game at home against Rustavi.

- Rennes, king of the paradoxes :
Stade Rennes proved once again that it is the king of paradoxes. Rennes is still the best attack in the league, but also the first team unable to score against Lille this season in all competitions (Ligue 1, Champions League and Champions Trophy, which represent twelve matches).
We can also notice that this is only the second time Rennes didn’t succeed in scoring any goal on a match. The first time was in Montpellier, for the third game week of Ligue 1 (0-4).

- Sow likes the Stade Rennais:
Since he left Stade Rennes in June 2010, Moussa Sow has really enjoyed his matches against his former club. Last season, the forward had already scored the equalizer in the first leg (1-1), before scoring a hat-trick in the return (3-1), which allowed him to finish the league season as the top goal-scorer.
For his third match against the “Rouge et Noir”, the Lille striker scored another goal, the fifth in three games. This time, he scored the first goal of the match. Since the beginning of the season, Sow is not as outstanding as last year, since this is only his third goal in nine matches of Ligue 1.

- Antonetti : Rennes « deserved to catch up »
During the post-game match press conference, Frédéric Antonetti refused to fall into fatalism. The Rennes’ coach even thinks that his team could have caught up during the second half. «Based on what the players did during the second half, we deserved to catch up , explained Antonetti. There are many things to improve, we takes goals too easily, even if there are some unfavourable facts for us. These many little facts have got big consequences for us. The first goal hurt us. It brought them much self-confidence and it put us in awkward situation. I’m disappointed of this match but I’m full of hope. We had a good start on this game. There were many “two against one” situations. Before their goal, we missed three nice situations ».

-  Stade Rennes at its lowest rank:
After the defeat last Sunday, Stade Rennes loses two ranks in the league table, and is now seventh, since its direct opponent Lille and its next opponent Lorient overtook it. Seventh is the worst rank reached since the beginning of the season, even if Rennes had already been classified at this level after the defeat in Montpellier (third game week) and after the draw against Nancy (sixth game week). Immediately climbed back up after the large victory in Sochaux, Stade Rennes then quickly slipped towards the queue of the head group.
During the game week to come, the objective will be quite simple: return to winning ways and prevent the gap with the leading times to stretch further.

- And now, the break!
After a long September month, and before a series of matches until early November, which should also be quite trying, some players have now the possibility to rest during a whole week. Some players, but not all of them, since several members of the squad are now leaving Rennes for their respective national teams, such as Yann M’Vila with “Les Bleus”.
The other ones have a right to rest during several days, since the next training in the Piverdière is planned next Thursday morning. This international break should also be the occasion to get some injured players back (Boukari, Brahimi, Mangane).

- Comments sources: ouest-france.fr