Stade Rennais return to Nice on Saturday. After their defeat in Ligue 1 early December, Benoit Costil and the Rouge et Noir are keen to show their “true figure” during this game of the Coupe de France’s round of 32.
The 2-0 defeat in Nice on December 3rd hasn’t been forgotten. “We handed the match on a plate, we were completely outplayed there, Benoit Costil remember. We didn’t have any excuse, we could just accept it in silence.” During the draw of the tenth round, Rennes wasn’t lucky when being offered a trip to Nice, after Nancy in the previous round. Nice-Rennes will in fact be the only encounter between games from the top-flight. “We were a bit disappointed to face a Ligue 1, it isn’t easy, especially in Nice were the context is not easy to cope with, the Rennes goalkeeper continued. But we truly want to redeem ourselves for the defeat there, since we didn’t show our true level.”
Will this round of thirty-two game, played on Saturday night, be a revenge? Frédéric Antonetti: “It will be a revenge on ourselves first”. “We don’t want to repeat the same mistake twice. I don’t like the word revenge, it will be an opportunity to return to Nice where we failed our match, as in Ajaccio, to make something much better.»
“ It will up to us to impose our football, our style of play, then we will have done the work”, Benoit Costil hints. As for Frédéric Antonetti, he doesn’t feel the flavour of the Coupe de France around the club yet. “We focus on our game to improve it, all our training sessions are based on this”, he explains, seeing this game as “a Ligue 1 game”.
« We only have two competitions left to play for, the league and the Coupe de France, we have to play them totally”, Benoît Costil continues. For Tongo Doumbia, “the Cup is an objective. Whether it is against a Ligue 1 or a Ligue 2, this round is a stage and we have to go through. It doesn’t matter what the match is, we are confident and we want to win them all. We are in a good dynamic and we will try to make it last.”
Despite the absence of seven players, the team will also be able to show it gathered experience thanks to the knock-out matches played and won in the European Cup last summer.
Nicolas Auffray - Le Mensuel de Rennes
- Photo : www.rennes.lemensuel.com
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