Olympique Lyonnais will open their Ligue 1 season of the 2024-25 campaign against Stade Rennais Football Club at Roazhon Park on Sunday afternoon.
Both these teams were able to finish inside the top-half last season and have European football qualification as their goal this season.
Although, Rennes was comfortably establishing itself in the top four of the Champions League qualifications in the previous few seasons, 2023-24 was less friendly with them occupying only the 10th place in Ligue 1 – their joint second-worst finish in a top-flight season in a decade.
Les Rouge et Noirs was managed by Julien Stephan starting from November of the previous year, and this summer he has performed a full-scale squad rotation using more than £60 million received from the sale of five football players – and at least £40 million were spent on the purchase of seven players.
Rennes played six friendly matches before the start of Ligue 1, three of which they won, two drew and lost one Rennes ended the pre-season with victory over Werder Bremen with a solitary goal by Benjamin Bourigeaud in the second half of the match.
Looking at the pre-season programme of his side, Stephan said there were “many positive aspects that can be learnt and a lot of areas that can be corrected”, and the 43-year-old added that he was delighted to have given a good number of first-team players match time and experience so that, they could have the necessary rhythm and feeling when football started for real and as well.
Les Rouge et Noirs had only three victories in their last 12 Ligue 1 games in the previous season and will look forward to getting off the blocks back nicely against a Lyon side which they had defeated 3-2 in a Ligue 1 match last season in what was a recent encounter in January this year.
At one point midway through last season, Lyon were in free-fall on the wrong side of the bottom three, having won just one of their first 15 matches of the season but the appointment of head coach Pierre Sage proved to be the turning point.
In fact, Lyon (37 points) is the most points any French top flight team has collected in 2024. The squad shot up from the bottom of the table to sixth position and qualified for the Europa League for the 2024–25 season.
Since then, Les Gones have been active in the summer transfer window, bringing in eight players for a total of about £100 million. However, their most prominent departure is Jake O'Brien, who left for Everton for about £16.4 million after spending only one season in France.
Five preseason friendly have resulted in two victories, two losses, and one tie for Lyon. The most recent loss came last weekend at the Emirates Stadium against Arsenal, when Lyon was defeated 2-0.
Although Lyon has lost four of their previous six games with Rennes, they did defeat Les Rouge et Noirs 1-0 in November of last year during their most recent visit to Roazhon Park.
