Without a fixed coach and clearly without clear guidelines for the coming months, Rennes' sole objective is to stay as far as possible from the red zone.
Corrected at Auxerre (4-0), Stade Rennais waited until Thursday to notify Julien Stéphan of his sidelining. Negotiations with Argentinian Jorge Sampaoli, former Argentina national team coach and Marseille coach, among others, appear to be about to conclude, but probably not soon enough for him to already be on the bench on Sunday.
On Friday, it was Sébastien Tambouret, usually in charge of the reserve, who presented himself to the press without formal assurance that he would still be in charge on Sunday. “We prepare as if we were there on Sunday”he replied on this subject. “Today, we are on the short term, (a) somewhat emergency mission, with a match in two days. We know that in two days, we have to do things right”he added. This very unartistic vagueness now seems the trademark of a club which has completely lost its direction in recent months.
A year of slow decline
The cryptic sentences of Bruno Genesio, during his last weeks as coach, about the fact that not everyone was pulling in the same direction in the club, had put the flea in the ear. The parachuting, almost a year ago to the day, of Julien Stéphan in his place, ordered directly by the owners against the advice of president Olivier Cloarec and sports director Florian Maurice, with whom Stéphan had not gotten along since his first pass, had added to the trouble. If Maurice's departure in the summer might seem to comfort Stéphan, it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory.
Weakened by a failed end to the season, he found himself in an already precarious situation upon the arrival of Franco-Italian Frederic Massara as sports director. After a flamboyant start against Lyon (3-0), the first difficulties and apparent tactical procrastination only degraded it further until the dismissal of Olivier Cloarec, replaced by Arnaud Pouille at the beginning of October, which placed him in first line and straight away from the error. Ironically, Stéphan's sidelining came exactly seven years after the arrival in Rennes of Olivier Létang as executive president – after the dismissal of the pair of president René Ruello and coach Christian Gourcuff -, who had marked the starting point of the golden age of the Reds and Blacks, punctuated by a victory in the Coupe de France and six consecutive European seasons, including one in the Champions League.
A burst of pride at least
For the moment, there is nothing to really suggest that Rennes is on the verge of finding the magic formula. The coaches considered more or less seriously – Igor Tudor, Patrick Vieira, Rudi Garcia, Habib Beye, Niko Kovac – show that even the profile sought was not so clearly defined. While waiting for this hunt for the rare pearl to be resolved, and even if there will be around ten days for the new coach to take charge, Rennes cannot afford to spend the upcoming match through loss and profit.
Thirteenth with a small point ahead of the red zone, they will host Toulouse who have finally launched their season since the last international break with a draw and two consecutive victories. It will take much more than a burst of pride to put Rennes back on the trajectory of its European ambitions, but in the immediate future and in the face of urgency, if there is not even that on Sunday, the mission of the future coach will be almost impossible.
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