A triple comeback tainted with revenge

With Évian this Saturday, three former Rennais will return to the Route de Lorient. Each of them returns with a good reason to remember their former club that they are still around. Three men, now in their thirties, who have found the perfect team to share their experience and have their eyes set on Ligue 1 survival.

«Bölöni made my life a living hell»

The first, who has left Brittany since the longest time, is Cédric Barbosa. At the Stade de la Route de Lorient, the midfielder will cross paths again with Frédéric Antonetti, which he dislikes since an altercation in March 2008. He will also return to a Stadium he hasn’t visited since a match played with Troyes against Rennes, in December 2006.
The rest of his career proved rather chaotic: relegated with the club from Champagne, Barbosa lived the same experience with Metz, where he played in Ligue 2. In 2009, his arrival in Évian Thonon-Gaillard came as a change of direction: rather than continuing going down, Brabosa would start climbing back. In two seasons, the club from Savoie was promoted from the National to the top flight, in which the midfielder returned with delight this season.

In Rennes, Cédric Barbosa’s stay was made of ups and downs. A solid player for Montpellier, he made – as many players at the time – the trip between the Hérault and Brittany. A solid Ligue 1 player, he would soon become one of the base-men of Laszlo Bölöni’s squad, starting 29 games in the league during the 2003-2004 season. The following summer however, torn knee cruciate ligaments draw his career to a halt. Returning to the competition in February 2005, he would never come back into Bölöni’s tactics, with players such as Kim Källström ou Yoann Gourcuff having become important members of the starting eleven. As a result, during the 2005-2006 season, the Romanian manager left him on the side-lines, and Barbosa became a key player… for the Reserve in CFA, where Danzé, Marveaux, Sow or Kembo were completing their training.

Logically, the former Montpellier-man didn’t appreciate to be side-lined in such a way. “I bear a grudge against him, he made my life a living hell in the last season, he explained talking about Bölöni in December 2006. What happened to him in Monaco (ed.: Bölöni had been fired only a few months in charge in the Principality) doesn’t surprise me, it could have happened to him in Rennes, since everyone was fed up”. The manager wasn’t the player’s only target: “I hold it against Pierre Dréossi as well, who put me to sleep with his talk”, Barbosa added.

«Not here to fill the gaps»

Just like Barbosa, Olivier Sorlin left the Stade Rennais because of a deteriorated relationship with his manager. It was at the end of 2007, with the arrival of Guy Lacombe, that his career in Brittany was turned upside down. Since returning after his short stint at Monaco in 2005, the man from Saint-Etienne was one of the cornerstones of the team. Following Olivier Monterrubio’s departure to Lens, he was the team’s eldest player, with nearly two hundred matches to his name with the Rouge et Noir shirt on.

Despite receiving steady criticism, he was well installed at midfield, acting as one of the regulating players in Pierre Dréossi’s tactics, alongside Bruno Cheyrou and Étienne Didot notably. The latter, who would be one of Lacombe’s first “victims”, was soon stripped of the club’s captaincy. Deciding to leave out of the squad, the manager first gave the honour of the task to Sorlin… before taking it off him and giving the armband to Mensah, and then to Hansson. Lacombe’s will to replace Sorlin during the summer was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “he wanted to use me in a position I didn’t fit in and I wasn’t interested, I wasn’t there just to feel the gaps”, the player explained a few months later.

After a stormy exchange with Lacombe, Sorlin was left out of the professional squad at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season. From August to December, he played only four games, none in Ligue 1. In January 2009, his departure was unavoidable, and it happened in the form of a loan to PAOK Salonika. He wouldn’t come back, and Sorlin’s final game at the Stade de la Route de Lorient would remain a Coupe de la Ligue match at the end of September 2008. On that night, in a team made of players side-lined like him (Wiltord, Katongo, Luzi) and of a few youngsters (including Théophile-Catherine, for his first professional game), he closed his Rennes career by knocking Le Mans out at the term of a penalty shoot-outs session (2-2 a.e.t, 4-3 pen)
Convincing in Greece, he was definitely transferred in summer 2009. After a year and a half in exile, he eventually came back to France and signed for Évian, for want of a Ligue 1 club wishing to recruit him. “I didn’t get any offer. It hurts but it’s nothing new. When I left Rennes for Salonika, I didn’t get a great deal of interest either. The decider are probably thinking I’m finished”, he regreted in November 2010, after satisfying debuts in Savoie. This season, he has a chance to prove them wrong. And at 32, he probably has a few more years of football in front of him.

«A bunch of moralisers»

His departure is still recent, therefore Jérôme Leroy’s return is naturally the most expected, in particular by his former supporters. A true artist, who delighted the crowds at the Stade de la Route de Lorient for four seasons, the playmaker should enter the Breton pitch for the last time (except for a Coupe de France tie) , this Saturday with the Évian Thonon-Gaillard shirt on. Next May, following the thirty-eighth game week of the Ligue 1 season, Leroy will start enjoying a well-deserved retirement, at 37.
Last summer, his departure was marked with incomprehension, when Leroy blamed his management for their lack of honesty. The player reached the term of his contract, and it seems the staff took to long before deciding whether or not they would offer him an extension for a final year. “Frédéric Antonetti and I hesitated for a long time, until the last minute, to decide about offering him a contract or not. It truly was a difficult choice, as he had a very good season”, Pierre Dréossi explained later.

But Leroy visibly considered the hesitation as a lack of honesty. “It amuses me, since those people say they hate hypocrites. At the end of the day, they are just a bunch of moralisers, they are unable to say things honestly”, he lashed out a few days before his general manager gave his version of the story.
Five months later, it isn’t clear whether there has been or will be reconciliation between the sides. On his side, Leroy enjoys his final months as a professional footballer to the fullest, with a last challenge in front of him. “I hope I will leave the club in Ligue 1 at the end of the season. In that way, I would be able to leave with my head high. If ETG was to remain in the top flight, it would be great. With one of the smallest budgets of the league, in my opinion, it would be just like a title”. A race for survival, which could require a good result in Rennes, in the stadium where he was displaying his brilliance until last spring.

- Sources declarations : Ouest-France (Barbosa), RTL and L’Équipe (Sorlin), RMC and Le Parisien (Leroy)
- Photo : srfc.frenchwill.fr