On Wednesday, Paris Saint-Germain faced Stade Briochin at Stade Roazhon Park in the quarter-finals of the Coupe de France 2024-2025. Guillaume Allanou, coach of the Breton team, spoke at a press conference after the Parisian 0-7 victory. He spoke of a small regret, but above all of a PSG that was far too strong and showed that it is one of the “big boys”. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have fond memories of the game.
Allanou: “He’s a war machine”.
Any disappointment as coach or president?
The coach isn’t disappointed, because we resisted, we knew it was mission impossible. After that, my role as coach was to make people believe that the impossible was possible. But we knew we needed an extraordinary alignment of the planets to beat that PSG team. I’m not saying we could have beaten them, but we might have given them a bit more to worry about. But this is a war machine. So I’m not any more disappointed than that.
The size of the scoreline hurts, but everyone’s taking a beating against Paris at the moment. A fortiori, a National 2 club like us, semi-amateur, there was no reason for us to perform miracles. I’m glad we held out, and that it was 0-2 at half-time. We had to stay in the game as long as possible.
In soccer, it’s the 3rd goal that counts. I would have liked it to have been for us, so that we could have believed a little, even if it seemed impossible to score 3. But I wanted the pleasure to last. Unfortunately, we took the 3rd goal at the very start of the half.
Allanou “It’s a form of respect”.
Is 0-7 respect ?
Exactly. By going 0-7, they respected us, and even at the end, when we let our horses loose and tried to push forward, they defended like starving men. They didn’t let us score one, although I would have liked to (smiles).
That’s the mark of the greats, to send out passes to say “we want the best, we want to win everything, we don’t want to take any goals”. They send a strong message to France and Europe. It’s a form of respect.
Allanou “We’ve created a shared memory that will bind us forever.”
Was it a great evening despite the defeat ?
Yes, it was great, with the flags, the lap of honor… We’re going to walk out of there with our heads full of memories and images. We’ve created a shared memory that will bind us forever, no matter what life throws at us afterwards. And what more could you ask for than for it to end with so many people thanking us ?
