DECRYPTION: With Jorge Sampaoli, a total revolution
The probable last arrival after a year which saw the entire sports sector renewed or almost, Jorge Sampaoli definitively embodies the revolution which is beginning at Stade Rennes.
It's a marriage that we were far from imagining, but which we should witness with a certain intrigue between Stade Rennes and its new coach. After 18 years of French coaches, the Breton club should hire here the third foreign technician in its history (after Vahid Halilhodžić and László Bölöni), the first non-French speaking, a not insignificant detail when we know the habit of the shareholder of be in regular exchange with your coach.
Jorge Sampaoli at Stade Rennes is a total revolution, and in more than one way. First in the game, the Argentinian having in all his clubs or almost proposed a tactical vision focused on possession, the relentless pressing even if it means being individual, all tinged with a riot of energy from all the moments. In Seville he shaped Samir Nasri, in Marseille he transformed Dimitri Payet. Sampaoli is more or less the anti-thesis of what Stade Rennes has been developing for a year now, a game where not conceding goals is more important than conceding them. But that's not all.
A gaming identity turned upside down
There is the game, and the nature of a coach who develops it. Jorge Sampaoli is the character, the grinta, the fire. It is a volcano in eruption, far from the image of a Stade Rennes that has looked like a sleeping beauty for several months. It is the coconut tree that we are shaking, the whiplash to wake up a club which is coming out of a season without having won Europe, and which is taking the path of a double when the announced objective is just to find this European cup. In this respect, the meeting of an explosive personality like that of Jorge Sampaoli with a squad that has cruelly lacked character for a long time, promises to be pleasant.
On the pitch but also in the locker room, it is a change that Stade Rennes should experience after 11 days of the championship. If two years ago Rennes had taken a definite turn in its playing identity with Bruno Genesio, there is reason to break the codes in an even more consistent way. Coupled with a change of heads at all levels (management, board of directors, sports management, players) over the past year, this development is a new guarantee of a change of era, for SRFC supporters in search of benchmarks. A new start, also in operation.
A decision-making chain found
Sports logic got the better of Julien Stéphan, whose end of mandate seemed inevitable, but was delayed in what it also represented. Appointed directly by shareholder François Pinault a year ago, the coach was unable to get out of a bad dynamic concluded by a loss to Auxerre (0-4) last Sunday, the final blow for him.
The appointment of Jorge Sampaoli, a path initiated by the duo Arnaud Pouille – Frederic Massara, themselves appointed by François and François-Henri Pinault via Alban Gréget (new chairman of the board of directors, deputy general director of the Artémis holding company), materializes a decision-making chain found. Where Stéphan had been appointed directly by the shareholder, against the advice of the president (Olivier Cloarec) and the sports director (Florian Maurice), the coach is this time enlisted by his direct superiors.
A sign of operations returning to normal, this latest decision also symbolizes a certain evolution between Pinault father and son, with regard to operations at Stade Rennes. Gréget, Massara, Pouille and now very probably Sampaoli, all were appointed at the initiative, directly or indirectly, of a current bearing more the mark of François-Henri Pinault. If they still work hand in hand and do not oppose each other, the shareholders seem to be taking a new course here. He will now be defined on the pitch by Jorge Sampaoli, for a period which is rarely long when it comes to the coach of 16 clubs in a 22-year career. Within a club with 14 coaches in 26 years, marriage promises to be intense.
