Champions League lowdown on Stade Brestois
This Tuesday at 9pm CET, FC Barcelona will be facing French club Brest for the first time ever. Here's the lowdown on a side that's been raising plenty of eyebrows in this season's Champions League.
Where are they from?
Brest is a port city of just 140,000 or so people in Finistère (department number 29 of France, hence the 29 in their name), which is part of Brittany, a region that has its own language, Breton, a Celtic tongue that bears certain similarities to Welsh. Due to its strategic coastal location, in the far north-west corner of the country, Brest has always been an important naval station, including a splendid castle and a proud maritime tradition that continues to this day.
The club
Stade Brestois 29 were founded in 1950 when five clubs joined forces to represent the city nationwide, although many fans insist that they are effectively a continuation of Armoricaine, a club founded half a century earlier and whose name the modern club adopted for a period.
The club didn't play its first season of Ligue 1 until as late as 1981, but after a fine decade with players of the calibre of David Ginola and Stéphane Guivarc'h, Brest fell on financial difficulties and were demoted to the lower leagues. The slow rebuild took the best part of three decades but by 2019 they were finally back in the French top flight.
In a manner comparable to Girona in La Liga, the first few years were just about holding their own among the big boys, but things fell into place last season when they finished a remarkable third in the league to not only qualify for Europe for the first time ever, but for the Champions League of all things!
Head to head
This is the very first time these clubs have met in any kind of fixture, and Brest thus become the seventh different team from the French championship that they have played in a competitive fixture (following on from Paris Saint-Germain, Lyon, Monaco, Strasbourg, Metz and Nice).
Barça have a very decent record in first-time meetings with clubs, not having lost to any of their last 20 new opponents. The last defeat in such an encounter was the shock 2-1 defeat at home to Rubin Kazan on 20 October 2009.
Form guide
2024/25 has been somewhat less brilliant a year for Brest, at least on the domestic front, in no small part due to the loss of key players, and they have only avoided defeat in five of their 12 Ligue 1 games played to date. They're currently 12th in the table.
In Europe, they are playing home games at Guingamp's Stade de Roudourou because their own ground fails to meet UEFA specifications, but things have contrasted enormously with their rather average league form. Their Champions League campaign began with wins over Austria's two representatives, Sturm Graz and Red Bull Salzburg, and a draw with German champions Bayer Leverkusen was followed by another win, this time at Sparta Prague. With 10 points out of a possible 12, they are an incredible fourth in the League Phase table. Only Liverpool, Sporting Lisbon and Monaco have better records!
The players
Most international caps
Edimilson Fernandes (Switzerland 34), Mama Baldé (Guinea Bissau 32), Kamory Doumbia (Mali 21), Massadio Haïdara (Mali 18), Abdallah Sima (Senegal 7)
The boss
Éric Roy was a midfielder at a number of French clubs including Marseilles, Lyon and his hometown club Nice. He also had spells in England at Sunderland and in Spain with Rayo Vallecano.
After retirement, he became a sports director, first at Nice where he was also first team coach for a while. After an unsuccessful year there, he served similar roles at Lens and then Watford in England before returning to coaching duties at Brest. And who could have predicted how well he would settle into the job, guiding the club straight to the unprecedented heights of the Champions League!