Rennes – MHSC: Nothing or almost nothing has changed on the Montpellier side while everything has changed on the Rennes side…

Rabby Nzingoula, qui a joué son premier match contre Nantes, est une des deux seules recrues montpelliéraines du mercato. Midi Libre – GIACOMO ITALIANO

Montpellier, qui n’a recruté que deux joueurs, se déplace à Rennes et ses douze nouveaux éléments, ce dimanche 15 septembre, à 15 h.

It's the match of all contrasts between Rennes and Montpellier, this Sunday (3 p.m.) at Roazhon Park. It will pit the Ligue 1 team that has recruited the most this summer against the one that has only brought in two players. One that has decided to change most of its key players when the other will rely on those who have been there for a long time. A club that has brought in a new sporting director (Frédéric Massara) when the other has trusted its recruitment manager (Bruno Carotti) for many years.

The main reason for this difference is obviously financial since Stade Rennais has a budget of 140 million euros with a billionaire at its head, François-Henry Pinault, while Laurent Nicollin's MHSC has one of 35 million euros. A colossal gap, especially when a TV rights crisis breaks out and this deprives the Montpellier club of 20 million euros…

130 million euros in sales, 80 million euros purchases for Rennes

As a result, Montpellier's recruitment was limited to the loan of Rabby Nzingoula (Strasbourg) during the last days of the transfer window and Birama Touré who arrived free, afterwards. A market that remained sluggish due to the lack of an agreement for the departure of Joris Chotard for whom MHSC wanted 10 M€.

During this time, the Bretons sold players for more than 130 million euros, most of whom had been trained at the club (Désiré and Gela Doué, Jeanuël Belocian, Matthis Abline, etc.) and recruited for nearly 80 million euros with young players from abroad and a maximum of 15 million euros (Groenbaek Denmark; Faye, Spain; Kamara, England; Gomez, USA). This did not escape Michel Der Zakarian who declared in a pre-match press conference: “They recruited well, they strengthened the team well. It's the opposite of us…"

Automatisms versus lack of cohesion

"It would be a lie to say that reinforcements wouldn't be good", confirmed Arnaud Nordin, the Montpellier striker who nevertheless specified that few changes in a group,"it was easier to create automatisms. There are good sides too." This was unfortunately not seen enough on the pitch given Montpellier's first results, even if we must take into account the significant number of injuries in the squad.

On the Rennes side, with so many departures and arrivals, cohesion did not come logically straight away since after winning the first match against Lyon (3-0), the Bretons remain on two defeats of continued. “It's a start that we hoped would be better, but we know that after so many changes in the squad throughout the transfer window, we ran the risk of having ups and downs, especially at the beginning”, declared Frédéric Massara, in L'Équipe and Ouest-France.

We must hope for the Montpellier residents that their shared experience is stronger than the new Rennes project.

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