The Stade Rennais is 110 years old!

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the practice of football developed in Brittany. The beautiful game was brought by Englishmen from Jersey, trading in the ports of Northern Brittany, from Saint-Malo to Saint-Brieuc. The games were then mainly played on the beach, but the sport soon became popular inlands, all the way to Rennes.

A few weeks after the creation of the Stade Rennais, the Football Club Rennais was also created. The two clubs would merge three years later and become the Stade Rennais Université-Club (SRUC).

Fortunes...

Although it wasn’t Rennes University’s official club (a title wich belonged to the Footballing section of the Rennes Étudiant Club, the REC), the SRUC was soon profiting of the city’s University status to attract some of the best players from Brittany… or from abroad: In 1930, it is in the aim to continue his studies and perfect his French that German striker Walter Kaiser arrived in Rennes. Three years later, he became the best striker in the first professional French championship.

_Having quickly taken the edge over Rennes’ other teams, SRUC went on, with more difficulties, to acquire Regional supremacy. After the First World War, the club grew by starting recruiting players from the Parisian area, such as centre François Hugues, the first ever player to be capped with France while playing for Rennes, in 1922. This is the time when Rennes started taking a national stature, reaching the Coupe de France final [1] in the same year 1922.

In 1932, the switch to professionalism – wanted by President Isidore Odorico – finished positioning Stade Rennes as one of the best teams in France with professional football appearing to close years of brown amateurism [2]. Stade Rennes also became the only Breton representative in professional football, becoming “the” club of the region.

Thirty years of highs and lows would follow, before the arrival of Jean Prouff as manager allowed the conquest of two Coupe de France victories in 1965 and 1971. But besides these two great dates, largely named and detailed in all history books dedicated to the club, how could one forget the darkest hours, when Stade Rennes saw its future dangerously threatened?

... and misfortunes

Indeed, after the euphoria of 1971, Rennes struggled to negotiate the succession of Prouff. Become “Stade Rennais Football Club” after the footballing section parted from the all-sports club, the club was relegated to Division 2 four years later. Even worse, bogged down in heavy financial difficulties, it came near complete disappearance in January 1978, before being saved in extremis by its senior managers Alfred Houget and Gérard Dimier, and the support of the fans. Without them, not sure we would be celebrating the hundred and ten years of existence of this “good old” Stade Rennais today…
Relegated to the dregs of Division 2, the club had certainly lost much of its aura. Since ten years or so, already, the FC Nantes designed by José Arribas had conquered France, and the old “Rouge et Noir” team was seeing scores of other Breton clubs grow and profit of the “Open” era " [3]to knock at the doors of the top flight. Brest, Guingamp, Quimper and soon Lorient or even Saint Brieuc came to rival a formerly hegemonic Stade Rennes. All of them were building their own history, securing the loyalty of their own public.

The competition was only a bit harder when a bit further south, Nantes was thriving and looking at Rennes starting their long period of up and downs. The slump in the 1970 wouldn’t stop penalising the club, especially as it came at a very unfortunate moment. At a time when some clubs started developing Academy policies, at a time when money started taking a considerable importance in French football, Stade Rennes could do nothing but hang on to avoid relegation or clinch a return to the top flight, this with a restricted budget, and the club couldn’t really invest in its Academy.
And although considerable efforts were finally made at the end of the 1980’s, notably with the creation of the Odorico Private Technical school, the club was left one step behind, and would strive to catch up over the next decade.
With the arrival of Pinault in 1998, Stade Rennes suddenly stepped in a new era. The “familial” management of the club by the city and local entrepreneurs disappeared in favour of a more modern management, more in phase with the business mentality continuing to take over the sport. After a few years of erratic decisions on the transfer market, the club’s rulers finally chose to build patiently rather than act compulsively, by laying their strategy on assets that are the Academy and state of the art training infrastructures.

A decade of disillusions, of inconsistency… but also of improvement

Since Stade Rennes celebrated its centenary, in 2001, a decade has gone by. Mixed feelings are emerging from those ten years of trials and errors, of missed opportunities, but also of constant improvement and of hope.
A decade which started with the nomination, as ambitious as incongruous, of a Christian Gourcuff needing time to set-up his tactical philosophy in a club too impatient to give him the opportunity. As if Stade Rennes had remained stuck between two eras. The romantic memories of the attacking football desired by Prouff on one side, and the pragmatic and abrupt realities of Pinault’s era on the other. Bölöni’s time in charge seemed to be the best conciliation of both, while laying the base of this image as a club of « losers », able to thump Lyon on their own turf with an Utaka-esque hat-trick and receive a monumental hammering in Nancy during the same season.

And indeed, incoherencies and disappointment didn’t lack in the space of ten years, harshly testing the morale and motivation of the Rennes supporters. From Fauvergue to Eduardo, through Quevilly or more recently Reims, disillusions followed disillusions, one crueller than the other. A persistent syndrome, regardless of the different managers and players that succeeded to each other over the last six or seven years.
Meanwhile, and almost paradoxically, it is undeniable that the club progressed strongly. A “nouveau riche” team in 2001, it managed to build a new status for itself, becoming one of those clubs that don’t wonder with anxiety at the beginning of each season whether they will spend the season fighting against relegation. Based on a solid foundation, thanks to the financial solidity of the Pinault Group, Stade Rennes start each season with a quiet mind, which certainly is a new situation in the club’s history.

Only remains, however, to pass this famous last step. A step materialised by thirty-seconds too much in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, or two fatal mistakes in Saint-Denis. The capture of a trophy and/or a qualification for the Champions League remain the two objectives to fulfil, in order to finally materialise one of the best periods in the club’s history.
May the next decade see Stade Rennes finally reach those objectives, in order to continue drawing its brilliant future. See you on March 10th, 2021, for an assessment of this next decade.

Photo : Stade rennais UC in 1904.
Source : Claude Loire & Virginie Charbonneau, Stade rennais FC, 100 ans en rouge et noir, l’album du centenaire, Éditions Apogée, Rennes, 2001, 123 p.