[gary_rb]

EDITO:

The 104 years old club from Brittany has found its place in the middle table of Ligue1 for many years. After many failures since the club was bought by a local multi-billionaire entrepreneur, the club decided to slowly build a team over a few years, thanks to its formation centre, while keeping its best players and sweeping away its ghosts from the past (as in recruitment mistakes.. BIG ONES )

That's when Lazslo Boloni was called and came from Sporting Lisboa to coach Rennes. He managed to build a very pleasant team, from the ashes that Vahid left after leaving for PSG. He injected his science of technical, fast, 1-touch collective football, which now makes Stade Rennais one of the teams with the most beautiful game style.

The team's weak spot is its unability to win away games. The statistics are quite amazing, it's actually the best team of Ligue1 at home, while it has only earned 3 points in away games.
Anyway, the staff doesn't really seem to care about this fact, since the claimed objective for this season was to find a place in the Top10. But we know that with such great games provided at home, they could easily be a challenger for the Top5 if they managed to solve this psychologic and motivation problem.

Anyway, even with such bad performances in away games, the team looks quite confident, and the fans are happy because home games, in the beautiful recently renovated Stade de la Route de Lorient, are the occasion of a great show. And fans are also confident that this team will soon manage to establish itself in the Top5, because of its talented technical players.
Now, the challenge for the staff is to make players like Monterubio, Sorlin, Frei and Maoulida sign a new contract, either way they will go freely, except for Frei, who has claimed he would think about leaving only if he had an offer from Lyon, Bayern München or Barça. Some of them have indeed already shown their interest in staying with Rennes, if Barça doesn't want them , and Etienne Didot, one of the best young players of Rennes (and of France, U21) has lit the way by signing a new 3 years contract.
If we can keep most of these key players, the next seasons are really going to be great.
Rennes formation centre has been improving year after year, and is now ranked 2nd best, after Auxerre's. It is the biggest provider of players for France U21 team.

The future holds the biggest hopes of all rennais, and it may start in the near future with the Coupe de France, the only remaining objective of Rennes for this season.. but everything is still possible, if the team wakes up in away games!
Stay tuned!

Upcoming games:

02/27/05 : Ligue1 : Lille - Rennes (6 PM GMT+1)
03/02/05 : Coupe de France : Rennes - Monaco (5 PM GMT+1)

Yoann Gourcuff, 18 years old Offensive Midfielder and product of the formation centre, has managed to find its place in the A team within a few games, and is a serious challenger for Kim Källström. He's a future star of football!

[SportBoy333]

What's their nickname ? I like their colors red and black. How big is the city of Rennes ?

[gaijin]

Originally Posted by SportBoy333

What's their nickname ? I like their colors red and black. How big is the city of Rennes ?

I thinks its the biggest in Brittany. Could be wrong though.

Nice thread gary, hope you can update it regularly for us. I like to know whats happening from other teams in Ligue 1.

[Nanbawan]

Originally Posted by SportBoy333

What's their nickname ? I like their colors red and black. How big is the city of Rennes ?

Nickname : "Les Rouges et Noirs" => the Reds & Blacks (not very original) ; thet were also known as a team which was making "l'ascenseur" (the elevator) because at the time they couldn't settle in the first division so they were going up and down each and every season.

Rennes is the capital of Brittany, traditionally, Nantes is also part of Brittany but not administratively now.

Rennes is the 10th city by population in France. The city is surrounded by a lot of small towns, they all merged in the Rennes District. What is distinctive in this city is that you can really live in the countryside, take the bus and rejoin the city center easily. Rennes is also known to be the smallest city in the world to have a subway...It's a student city, if you stroll in the center in the afternoon ; you have the impression of being in a big campus(I studied there of course). It's the rock city of France as it stages "Les Transmusicales" festival where, for instance, Nirvana was discovered for most of the European ears.

Despite the fact of being a provincial bourgeoisie city, it's also a city of social contestation background. The very good point being that Rennes was certainly the place where J.M. Le Pen had the less votings during the last presidential elections (smthg like 95-5 ).

The biggest French Citroën plant is located there and it is one of France's biggest and finest R&D technopole concerning telecommunications and automation.

50 mi. North of Rennes is the Emerald coast (because the sea really has this colour) where you can find Dinard, Cancale and St Malo...and St Briac where John F. Kerry used to spend his hollidays as a youngster (I like to remind that). St Malo is the corsair city where Chateaubriand is burried and where M Jacques Cartier left to discover Quebec, the Saint-Laurent river and most of Eastern Canada. That's why there is a strong relationship here with our French Canadian cousins .

info on Rennes

[gary_rb]

the team is simply called "les Rouge et Noirs" (the red and blacks)

the city itself has 210 000 inhabitants, it's the 10th biggest of France. and the metropole has 375 000 inhabitants. the population is quite young since there are 60 000 students

here's a link with the goals of last game : Rennes 4 - 1 Nice
http://yolda.free.fr/Rennes-Nice.avi

[gary_rb]

lol, Nanbawan did a better job than me here

[Nanbawan]

Originally Posted by gary_rb

lol, Nanbawan did a better job than me here

Slow too much you are, young padawan

[RandyNA74]

After only a few hours, this is already one of the coolest threads on BigSoccer.

[gary_rb]

The Brazilian international, Dudu Cearense, on loan to Rennes with an option, is rumoured to go to CSKA Moscow at the end of the season. He currently belongs to a Japanese club, Kashiwa Reysol. Rennes doesn't seem to want to keep Dudu, and will not use the option they have to buy him. I'm disappointed, he looked very promising But it's true that we already have a lot of quality players in the midfield, and if the staff thinks all of them are better than Dudu, then it's not really a big deal.

Olivier Sorlin is rumoured to be leaving to Monaco at the end of the season, when his contract expires. Last summer, Deschamps already wanted to recruit Sorlin, as well as Monterubio. Sorlin has been claiming he wanted to leave Rennes for quite a long time, he doesn't forgive the staff for having left him on the bench for many games last seasons, though he's a starter in every game nowadays.

[gaijin]

Is Nantes really considered part of Britanny? Well you learn something new each day, I never class them as Britanny.

Also how are the two former Djurgardens players performing? Isaksson and Kallstrom?