You're used to it: the reference site for SRFC news, Stade Rennais Online, gives us its current vision of the Breton club every month. Time, this time, for the arrival of the Argentine technician, Jorge Sampaoli.
By appointing a coach at odds with its image and its past, Stade Rennais intends to give a boost to a failed start to the season. He is the last new link in the chain. After changing the chairman of the board of directors, the sporting director, the players and then the president, the SRFC has just changed the coach, all after a revolutionary year. This Stade Rennais no longer has much in common with that of a year ago at the same period, except for the period of unrest in which it is still immersed. Thirteenth in Ligue 1 after eleven days, the Breton club has failed at the start of the season, and the appointment of Jorge Sampaoli promises to be a final boost to try to wake up the beast.
A coach at odds with the club's image
Let's start with the most obvious: Sampaoli is the first foreign coach at Stade Rennais since 2006, but also the first non-French speaking. A detail far from trivial when we know the importance for the shareholder of being able to communicate with their coach regularly. The staff accompanying the former Marseille coach, however, has been giving his instructions in French since his arrival at the club, where the players seem to have found a smile again. Known to be volcanic around the field, Sampaoli has been a courteous, calm and wise man since his arrival. More vocal during training, he advances with an image far from a discreet, measured Stade Rennes, not wishing to make waves. The setbacks of his physical trainer at Nice or Flamengo or his temperament along the touchline have a lot to do with it, but this marriage between Rennes and Sampaoli is as intriguing as expected.
A workforce to wake up
Beyond the accounting deficit, it is the face shown by Stade Rennes since the start of the season that is worrying. Apathetic, without reaction, without character, the Rouge et Noir come out of two “shameful” matches against Auxerre and Toulouse. Jorge Sampaoli will have this primary challenge: to bring out a collective from a sum of individualities for the moment well below initial expectations. Nothing at the moment leaves room for optimism regarding a workforce completely turned upside down, where no leader has emerged, and where executives have plunged at the same time as the rest of the team. Sampaoli arrives at the bedside of a sick team and says he wants to first establish a diagnosis. This continues to be done with internationals returning little by little after their selections.
Lille to limit damage
Sampaoli's mission begins in Lille on Sunday, against the Mastiffs of Bruno Genesio, who had made his baptism with Rennes against Marseille of… Sampaoli, in 2021. The reunion promises to be complicated for a Stade Rennes far from the level of the sparkling Lille since the start of the season, particularly in the Champions League. Saint-Etienne, Nantes and Angers then await Rennes, three teams in “its” championship at the moment. With a full squad, more time to work, the Argentinian will then have before him three matches more within the reach of the SRFC, and an opportunity to raise the confidence gauge before the break. For these beginnings, it is first important for Rennes to show another face with Sampaoli, and to limit the damage.
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