INTERVIEW
It's a fanfare arrival: barely inducted and already in the history of the Breton club. At Stade Rennais, Nicolas Holveck experienced an "exceptional assumption of office", these are his own words. Inducted on March 18 in place of Olivier Letang, the former leader of AS Monaco "could not join Rennes at the beginning of the week", because, of course, of the Covid epidemic19. In the meantime, the French championship has been stopped and the club obtained an historic result, finishing on the podium, in third place. "If you take the budget as a benchmark, Rennes has really outperformed this season," notes the new boss of the Rouge et Noir on Europe 1.
>> Find all of the major debates in Europe 1 Sport in replay and podcast here
Objective, Europe all seasons
Nicolas Holveck wishes to "really congratulate the previous management team, Julien (Stéphan, the coach, editor's note ) which obviously has a preponderant part in this success", adding: "The objective is to fight to be every time Once again, third, it's outperformed, but Rennes has everything it takes to fight every year for the European Cup. We know that the clubs will suffer a lot, at least we have a small shock absorber with the certainty of playing at least the Europa League, and above all an incredible prospect of being able to join the group stage of the Champions League, which is the Grail for any footballer. "
But the President of Rennes is already seeing further and believes that training will be a strong focus for the coming seasons. "We must continue to develop the training center, it must be the heart of the reactor, we must build the team around our talented young people from the training center, we see it with Edouardo Cavaminga.", He believes.
Resumption of training "a sporting logic"
And while Rennes is part, with Strasbourg, of the two Ligue 1 clubs to have already resumed training, Nicolas Holveck explains: "It is a sporting logic: a high level athlete who stays three months without doing anything even if he is very serious at home, it is not possible. I think that the clubs which have not made this recovery will have big surprises at the start of the season. Psychologically already, you should know that a confined player, it's not really his way of life, he's used to training in the morning, resting in the afternoon having weekend matches. "