It’s a funny birthday that FC Nantes is celebrating on September 11. 25 years ago, the Canaries played a Champions League match in a strange context. While the whole world had their eyes on New York, Raynald Denoueix’s players delighted La Beaujoire by outclassing PSV Eindhoven (4-1) of Erik Gerets, Mateja Kezman and Mark van Bommel.
At the time, the FCN was a French champion in great difficulty. At the end of a summer marked by the departure of Eric Carrière to Lyon, the Canaries had started their season in reverse: six league matches, four defeats, two draws, and only three goals scored.
Facing PSV, the Nantes residents finally (re)found themselves. The recruits scored very quickly, Pierre-Yves André (5th) and Olivier Quint (10th sp), then the young Wilfried Dalmat, surprise of the day from Denoueix, hit the nail on the head before the break (45th). The supersub Marama Vahirua will have a paddle in the second half (75th), before John de Jong’s anecdotal gap is reduced (90th).
The next day’s matches had been postponed
Despite the events that occurred a few earlier in the United States, the matches of this Tuesday, September 11 in the Champions League were still played, with a simple minute of silence before kick-off. The Wednesday matches, on the other hand, had been postponed, UEFA taking stock of the global geopolitical crisis that was underway. After its defeat, PSV would have expressed its anger to the authorities, by asking to replay the meeting, given the context in which it took place.
This success against PSV launched the Canaries’ great European campaign. Raynald Denoueix and his men, by winning two victories against Lazio, came out at the top of a very dense group in which we also found Galatasaray. The Champions League then had two group stages, and the Canaries then came up against two behemoths of the time, Bayern and Manchester United, as well as the Portuguese Boavista.
