EXCLUSIVE | Mikaël Silvestre: ‘For Rennes, qualifying for the Champions League has to be the objective’ | OneFootball

Get French Football News sat down with former Stade Rennais, Manchester United, Arsenal and France defender Mikaël Silvestre to look back at les Bleus performance at the recent World Cup, and to look at some potentially interesting prospects for the coming season.

In this third and final part, Mikaël assessed the prospects for his first club, Stade Rennais, this season and also reminisced about playing in one of the great football teams.

Your first club, Rennes, struggled a little at the beginning of last season, and then under Franck Haise, they improved a lot. Are you positive about their upcoming season?

I think the club is always ambitious, and if they could return to the Champions League, it would be good. They are not the only ones to be ambitious, but when you look at their recruitment and the way they finished last season, qualifying for Europe, the Europa League is the minimum expectation. And taking third place and qualifying for the Champions League, that has to be Rennes’ objective. I say third rather than second because I think there is often a correlation between budget and the results. So it could be a Marseille, a Lille, a Lyon or a Monaco, they all have bigger budgets than Rennes. If they can spring a surprise then great, but at the moment I don’t see them as the dauphin of Paris Saint-Germain.

You scored in one of my favourite ever matches when France beat Portugal 4-0 in 2001. At that time France were so good that it never crossed one’s mind that they could lose – I guess they peaked a year too early! What did it feel like to play in a team like that? Did you feel unbeatable?

Yeah, it’s true that playing in a team like that where the players are all at the peak of their career, in fact, what it feels like is that we all feel strong. We all feel strong in all the compartments of the game, so in winning the ball back, in the construction, in the finishing. We feel very strong individually, collectively, and it’s a feeling that is quite unique because we go into the match feeling that at some point in the match we are going to dominate our opponent, that we are going find a solution and score. That’s not always a given but it’s true that coming into the match, coming onto the pitch, we know that if we each do our job, then we have a great likelihood of winning the match. It’s a rare feeling and a privilege to be able to do that at a very high level against the best nations in the world.

Mikaël Silvestre was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of BetVictor Online Casino

GFFN | Jeremy Smith