Stade Rennais had achieved a high level first half of the season, placing second in Ligue 1 on matchday 17, before slipping to 5th position just five days later. Many players were absent in January, through injury or traveling to Cameroon for the 2021 African Cup of Nations. In mid-December, Breton coach Bruno Génésio explained that “strengthening for 3-4 weeks, it was still complicated”. In the team, its sports director Florian Maurice believes that “it is not because there are defeats that we recruit.”
“We had a very important transfer window last summer to compensate for anything that could happen”, explains the one who made his leaders spend nearly 50 million this summer for intelligent recruitment (Laborde, Majer, Sulemana, Alemdar and Meiling). He goes on to insist that the injuries are temporary and that we should not create an atmosphere of panic: “Injured players will come back, so for me there was no need. Succumbing to general panic, modifying or revolutionizing the team when the results are less good, this is not my state of mind. When asked about the experience of his relatively young team, the former Olympique Lyonnais replied: “but were we speaking from experience a few weeks ago when it was working well? You will say that it is in delicate moments like this that a lack of experience emerges. But it is not necessarily by going to get a player of 35, 36 or 40 years that it is settled.
