Angers Football Club aims for a win against FC Nantes in the final game of the season.

Seeing the bad buzz this created, the attacking midfielder, called up this week for the first time with the Algerian team to face Uganda in the CAN 2023 qualifiers in June, made his mea culpa on Twitter a few days later. “Regarding my statement about the match against FC Nantes, I wanted to make it clear that I respect all our opponents, including FC Nantes. In no way did I want to disrespect this club. We have one game left and we will fight until the end“, wrote the former Le Havre, who arrived free in Anjou last summer.

“Between us, there has never been anything. Angers-Nantes is not really a derby because we have never really evolved together in history, except for the last eight yearsconfirms Grégoire Bourget, president of the Magic Scop supporters group. During the very good years of Nantes, when the SCO was in L2 or National, many Angevins supported the Nantes neighbor. We do not necessarily want to see Nantes go down. On the other hand, it would not have been the same story if it had been Laval opposite.”

Arnauld Lucas, 21 years of professional career in Angers (six as the last bastion of the SCO then as goalkeeper coach from 2006 to 2021), is on the same wavelength. “It’s a classic derby but doesn’t unleash passions. The real rivalry of the SCO is with Lavalcorroborates the former assistant of Stéphane Moulin. In 2019, we were happy to make the Angevins happy. But for us, the satisfaction was the same as when we were won in Marseille or Lyon.”

The former emblematic doorman of the SCO therefore associates the media release of Himad Abdelli more with “a clumsiness“. “I don’t see the point of wanting to drag Nantes into the fall of Angers. A descent is traumatic and it causes a lot of negative things for the players, the staff or the people who work at the club. We can’t wish thathe hammers. Afterwards, we will have to approach this 38th day like any L1 match. To end the season well and not distort the championship. Even if they are in the cart, the players remain competitors.”

The people of Nantes, who remain on nine consecutive matches without a win (all competitions combined), have been warned: the SCO players will not come to La Beaujoire without ambition on Saturday evening.