Rennes/PSG – Haise on Luis Enrique's choices and Rennes' display | OneFootball

Paris Saint-Germain and Rennes faced off thisSunday at Roazhon Park on matchday 1 of the 2026-2027 Ligue 1 season.The match ended in a 2-2 (Rennes/PSG video highlights) draw. After the game, Rennes coach Franck Haise spoke to Ligue1+.

Haise: “It’s a strong signal, but the signal proved him right.”

Coach, when you have a player who carries that much weight in a group (Dembélé), taking him off at halftime is no small thing, is it?

No, it’s true that it’s a strong signal, but the signal proved him right. When you see the players coming on, maybe it also makes it easier to make changes at halftime. He sees it through—the star is the team, and everyone knows that, things are clear. If some players are below par—and he wasn’t the only one in the first half, by the way—he made those choices and he was right to make them.

If Paris does that, does it help you with your own players?

If at Paris the star is the team, then obviously at Stade Rennais the star also has to be the team. Otherwise, there’s a problem. (Laughs)

Haise: “Of course we’re disappointed, and in the end not too troubled”

You played your game—no regrets?

I didn’t want us to be completely shaken after a match like that. Of course we’re disappointed, and in the end not too troubled, and to get caught out on things like that that we had worked on explains it and shows what still needs work.

Against opponents like that, you can’t make mistakes. We made a few and we paid for them. After that, with the match we played, I told them we still need to look at the game, because if we score to make it 3-2, we say everything was perfect, and you can’t look at the match only through the prism of the result. You have to look at it as a whole—there were a lot of good things, and we know that. We also know there are things to work on, otherwise we would have won the match, but that’s how it is. We’ll keep moving forward.

Haise: “We had to drop deeper because there’s so much control on the other side”

Would the game plan have been the same if you had had to go to Paris?

I’d say yes, from time to time in certain phases we tried to be a bit higher up, and even then we were doing it a little differently from what we were used to, sometimes keeping a bit of cover, which we don’t always do.

And then, after that, there’s the game scenario with the fact that we scored fairly quickly, which reinforced the idea of a mid-block, and we had to drop deeper because there’s so much control on the other side. At times we dropped a bit too much, sometimes too much. But overall, it’s more or less what we were trying to do, along with the efficiency we saw on the goal.

Haise: “It’s encouraging, even if it doesn’t take away the slight disappointment.”

You struggled a bit with your principles late in the match, especially with giving Ruiz a little too much space?

Yes, it was a chain of small mistakes, especially on the second goal. We didn’t really have that in the first half, with lots of blocked shots, lots of shots that are difficult to deal with. When you run a lot, there’s inevitably some fatigue, and those two or three meters, or the right step to take when needed, sometimes you’re just missing a little. It’s encouraging, even if it doesn’t take away the slight disappointment because we weren’t far off, but it’s still encouraging going forward.

Haise: “The idea is to isolate their player in one-on-one situations”

How did you manage the positional switches, the play out wide, and closing down the middle?

Yeah, we had a slight overload on one side and less on the other. That already made it a bit easier, even if there were sometimes double-width or even triple-width situations. The idea is to isolate their player in one-on-one situations and, whenever possible, double up, either with the wide player or sometimes with one of our midfielders who could come closer in certain phases.

We did it pretty well—that was the plan. It’s really more over the duration of the game that, despite the effort and energy spent, you can sometimes run short. We did run short in a few situations.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here.