Stade Rennais – Monaco: Pressing, tactics, game plan… Julien Stéphan wants to stay on course
At a press conference, the coach spoke at length about his team’s way of playing, and does not want to question everything at this stage of the season. Convinced, sometimes annoyed, Julien Stéphan maintains his course before Monaco.
Do you plan to maintain this desire to press high?
It allowed us to win some matches, others not. Should I stop after 5-6 days with this idea? I don’t think so. If we go wrong… But is there a way to defend low on our last 30 meters? So. When building something, just because you don’t succeed right away doesn’t mean you should stop doing it. Otherwise we change every 2-3 matches, and we leave no guidelines for the group. But when it doesn’t work, we have to identify why, and focus on these areas of the game and hope that little by little we can demonstrate progress. And that’s the objective. We recovered very good balls against Lyon, Montpellier, we downplayed the victory against Montpellier a lot, but almost the same team lost in the 90th minute in Monaco. Winning Ligue 1 matches is hard, we must not minimize the victories. We were only 15 seconds away from winning our match against Lens by acting in this way. We had gained this balance of power from the pressing. It’s not because it didn’t work against Paris that we were in difficulty, beaten in many areas… Even if we have a very strong opponent in Monaco, we may have to adapt a bit. little but keep a guideline.
It seems difficult to see today if Rennes is a transition or possession team…
I think that after 6 days, it is not possible to answer the question. I don’t see why we couldn’t become a possession team. But do we want it? Is it in our interest to be? It’s something else. I remain convinced that we will gain in quality of possession. Is it in our interest to go from 45% to 60% ownership? Is it in this register that we will be most efficient? I ask to see. But we will have to increase this possession rate a little because it is too low. We must have more control, but using only one game register I think will not be good either. In Paris, we were neither efficient in one nor the other.
You said after Paris that you did not have the weapons to make 70m transitions. Did you not have the desired solutions in terms of profile in the transfer window?
No, we’re not there yet. With this team, making 70m counterattacks is not the most appropriate. Our mastery is not sufficient today to create more. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. We will work hard for it. There is no question today of calling into question the transfer window, or the quality of the players. We have to improve, progress, it’s a reality.
How long do you think it takes to create a team’s own gaming identity?
We are working to make it happen as quickly as possible, and we are working very hard, I assure you. We are demanding with the players and honest about the reality of what we do. We come out of 3 games with a victory against Montpellier, a last-second draw against Lens and we lost in Paris. And I have the impression that having lost in Paris redistributes everything, or that we are super negative. We lost in Paris against those who were stronger than us. we are not sufficiently satisfied with what we produce today. But we are 6 days away. We hope this time will be as short as possible. We are aware of our shortcomings, our current limits, but there are also certain things that we do not realize too badly. And we try to emphasize this to the players because otherwise they will completely lose confidence in themselves and that is not the objective. Some things worked well against Montpellier and Lens, and we must also highlight them and not overshadow everything.
Are home victories something to rely on?
We said it at the start of the season. But we are only 6 days away, it seems a little early to say that we are strong at home and weak away. The calendar also comes into play. We played in Reims, Strasbourg, Paris. Until proven otherwise, no team since the start of the season has taken points in Paris. In Strasbourg, if I’m not mistaken, it was Marseille who lost this weekend, right? So who didn’t manage to do better than what we did. And Reims is 4th in the standings, and is the only team to have managed to take points in Paris, making a great start to the season. It’s too early to draw lessons from the schedule we had. If it continues for another 3 or 4 consecutive away games, then yes it will be annoying.
Don’t you feel like you’ve seen a different face at home and away?
Yes, it was different, but the opponents were also different. I think it’s a combination of things. The fervor, the weight of the public behind us, it’s very important, it strengthens the confidence of the players. We will have to do more and better outside to offer a different face than that. I also believe that it will be important to trigger a first reference moment with this brand new group, outside, to also regenerate belief. We had a first strong moment with Lyon and a great match straight away which certainly gave confidence at home. But outside, we don’t yet have this point of reference with this young group, under construction.
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