Reims are having a renaissance.
After facing then Ligue 1 leaders Monaco two weeks ago, they spent the international break fifth in Ligue 1 with 13 points from eight games, four off the top. The Athletic was there for that one, keen to see a Reims side who are resurgent under their now famous manager.
In the past three seasons, they have been 16th, 15th and 19th at that same stage (with six, seven and two points). Not since 2015-16 have Reims begun a Ligue 1 season this well.
Last year’s poor start ended Oscar Garcia’s 15-month tenure as head coach.
Will Still, his assistant, became interim manager just over a month before the club season halted for the playing of the World Cup in Qatar. His first game in de facto charge, with Garcia missing due to personal reasons, was a 0-0 draw at home to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). He matched up their 3-5-2 with a starting XI containing eight players aged under 24.
Garcia was then officially sacked on October 13, the day before Still’s 30th birthday. Reims did not lose in their next five under Still, with two more goalless draws (away to Lorient and Brest), a 1-1 against Montpellier and odd-goal wins over Auxerre (2-1) and Nantes (1-0).
That run got Still the job permanently, and Reims picked up where they had left off when the season resumed just after Christmas, producing an 18-game unbeaten streak before finally losing a league fixture to Marseille on March 19. They had as many wins as draws (nine) and kept 12 clean sheets in those matches, conceding just seven goals.
There were some standout performances.
They ended Rennes’ 17-game unbeaten run in the first post-World Cup match, winning 3-1 at home after scoring twice inside the opening 22 minutes. Those two goals came from crosses, but their four first-half offsides underlined the tenacity with which they counter-attack and play in-behind.
Reims beat Troyes 4-0 at home in February for their first top-flight victory in the Derby de Champagne-Ardenne since 1978. They had four different goalscorers that day and a mix of goals; incisive transitions from midfield, a strike from distance after a high turnover following a counter-press, and a back-to-front move from their own goal kick.
They went toe to toe with PSG in a 1-1 draw at the Parc des Princes in late January, memorable for Folarin Balogun’s 96th-minute equaliser, racing onto a through ball and rounding Gianluigi Donnarumma.
But it was not smash-and-grab. Reims outshot the champions 9-1 in the first half, a varied attack of crosses, wide combinations and electric counter-attacks from their own half. In build-up, central midfielder Azor Matusiwa dropped between the centre-backs and played a sweeper role. They pressed PSG high and only dropped into a stubborn low- or mid-block when that was broken.
Still’s remarkable achievement — that unbeaten run was the longest in Ligue 1 last season; PSG could only manage 16 without a loss — quickly became social media folklore and a bit of a meme. Still has described himself as “big, ginger” but there remains too little acknowledgement, let alone praise, of how elite he is.
His background as an analyst and coach at Belgian clubs Beerschot and Standard Liege, assistant to Garcia, was deliberately overlooked by headlines in favour of Still’s hobby of playing Football Manager when younger. Lots of people do not take Ligue 1 seriously anyway, something compounded by Reims being fined each game for Still not having his Pro License. He held a UEFA A License, the qualification directly below.
“My head is lost somewhere in all the media attention. My social media’s going nuts. It gets too much,” he told The High Performance Podcast last month. “All I really want to do is win a game of football.”
Reims might be the most nationally diverse team in Europe. Still, who was born in Belgium to English parents, named 10 different nationalities in his starting XI for the game against Monaco The Athletic attended.
Goalkeeper Yehvann Diouf plays for France Under-21s; teenage right-back Ibrahim Diakite is from Guinea; centre-back pairing Joseph Okumu and club captain Yunis Abdelhamid are Kenyan and Moroccan. Left-back Thibault De Smet is Belgian.
The midfield is represented by Malta, the Netherlands and Zimbabwe — Teddy Teuma, Matusiwa and Marshall Munetsi respectively.
Teuma, signed from Belgium’s Union Saint-Gilloise in the summer, is a two-footed midfielder, capable of breaking lines with passes and dribbles, and able to win fouls. His set-piece delivery is precise — Reims went into this month’s international break with the joint-most set-piece goals (five) in Ligue 1. In August’s 3-1 away win over Montpellier, Teuma assisted the first with an inswinging corner, curled a direct free kick over the wall for the second, and finished the scoring with a rocket half-volley from outside the box.
Reims midfielder Teddy Teuma (29) announced himself in Ligue 1 at the weekend with 2 goals & 1 assist vs Montpellier in only his 3rd start. pic.twitter.com/Xuw60X0et2
— Get French Football News (@GFFN) August 28, 2023
Munetsi is Reims’ third-longest serving player, behind Abdelhamid and Thomas Foket. He is as pure as box-to-box midfielders come, often making late runs for crosses, with 14 goals and 10 assists since the start of 2021-22. He covered over 14km in the home win over Rennes last December, the most by any player in a Ligue 1 game all season.
Up front, Danish striker Mohamed Daramy is only 21 but plays like an old-fashioned No 9, constantly running in behind. Either side of him are Japan internationals; Keito Nakamura, a right-footer at left-winger, and Junya Ito on the right. Ito is into his thirties but only Balogun and Abdelhamid played more minutes for Reims last season, and few in the league can match the dribbling and final-ball quality of Still’s right-footed right-winger.
For most UK and U.S. football fans, Reims last season were all about Balogun, the now USMNT striker then on loan from Arsenal.
He scored 21 times in his debut Ligue 1 season, something only 12 men had managed previously, accounting for 47 per cent of Reims’ goals, the highest proportion in the league. Over the summer however, Balogun returned to his parent club and was then joined Monaco in a permanent deal.
Losing such a key player could be ruinous to many clubs, but Reims have dealt with similar situations almost yearly.
Centre-back Wout Faes, who made their second-most appearances in 2022-23, went to Leicester City last September. Hugo Ekitike, their top scorer in 2021-22, was loaned last summer to PSG and then moved to them permanently this July. They sold Boulaye Dia to Spain’s Villarreal in 2021 after he had finished top scorer in the two seasons prior.
Axel Disasi, now of Chelsea, left for Monaco after being Reims’ second-most used player in 2019-20. That season was abandoned due to Covid-19, with Reims sixth, technically their highest-ever Ligue 1 finish. They had the best defensive record in the division, conceding 21 in 28 games, and won away to Rennes, Marseille and PSG without conceding. Reims were the only visiting side to win at the Parc des Princes across all competitions in a season where PSG did the domestic treble and reached the Champions League final, losing 1-0 to Bayern Munich.
Reims themselves have been losing European finalists, both times to Real Madrid, but long ago. They contested the first-ever European Cup final in 1956, ironically at the Parc des Princes, with Madrid winning 5-3. Three years later, the same opponents defeated Reims 2-0 in the German city of Stuttgart.
The first European Cup final, Stade de Reims – Real Madrid 3:4, Paris 1956 pic.twitter.com/PLB7paf8wN
— FootballTime&Nations (@FCTimeNations) April 21, 2020
Between 1949 and 1962, Reims won two Coupes de France (1950, 1958) and six Division 1 (now Ligue 1) championships, though surprisingly never retained a league title. They are tied with Bordeaux as France’s seventh-most successful club (in terms of title wins), with one more than Lille and two more than Nice, but their decline was catalysed by the departure of legendary manager Albert Batteux in 1963.
Decades later, in 1991, they were relegated to the third tier due to their debts. They failed to find a buyer and were liquidated after declaring bankruptcy. In 1992 they were reborn as Stade de Reims Champagne, in France’s sixth tier, and changed back to Stade de Reims in 1999 after winning three promotions in six years.
The chart below shows Reims’ ClubElo ranking since 2002, the earliest year for which there is data. The ranking measures “relative strength levels” — the higher the better — and it can be used to track a club’s long-term performance, showing in this case Reims’ rise to their peak so far in 2023.
Reims reached Ligue 2 by 2001 but finished bottom in their first season after returning to that level. They came straight back up though, and spent eight of the next nine seasons in Ligue 2, managing only two top-half finishes — they were 10th in 2010-11 and then runners-up to Bastia the following season, so ending a 33-year wait for top-flight football, 20 years after going out of business.
But they struggled for stability and were relegated in 2015-16 after three consecutive seasons of declining points. David Guion, their former academy director, then led them to the Ligue 2 title in 2017-18 with a league-record 88 points and 28 wins.
After finishing eighth, sixth and 14th in three Ligue 1 seasons, Guion resigned in May 2021. Garcia was appointed, and you know the rest.
Reims lies 144km (90 miles) east of Paris, and is the unofficial capital of France’s Champagne region. It is leafy and green, encircled by rolling vineyards. It is not a big city, the 12th largest in France and one-tenth the size of Paris. There is no metro system, just a stylish, modern tram with two lines that are nine and 11km (5.6 and 6.8 miles) long.
The game against Monaco kicks off at 9pm local time, and when The Athletic boards a tram in mid-afternoon, it is otherwise empty. The roads and streets are quiet. You almost need to double-check that this is matchday.
Their stadium, the Auguste Delaune, is close to the city centre, sheltered by trees and has a canal nearby. There have to be few grounds in Europe with a more peaceful ground walk — it rivals Fulham’s Craven Cottage.
The Stade-Auguste Delaune (Liam Tharme/The Athletic)
Germany’s surrender at the end of the Second World War in Europe was signed in Reims, and the stadium was renamed post-war in honour of a former sportsman with links to the French Resistance who was killed by the Gestapo. The stadium hosted Hungary’s 6-0 win over the Dutch East Indies in the 1938 men’s World Cup and, 81 years later, six games at the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Its four floodlight masts, which resemble massive javelins, are 75m (250ft) tall and, in the words of architect Michel Remon, who renovated the stadium in the early 2000s, are “like cathedral spires, (which) keep watch over the city and announce it from afar”.
If it was quiet earlier in the day, it is far from it by the time The Athletic arrives at the stadium, almost two hours before kick-off. Fans are queuing in droves, eager to watch a Reims team on the up.
Fans queue to get in (Liam Tharme/The Athletic)
A brass band play on the concourse. This game is third against first in the table, with Reims knowing a win takes them top. Yet there is not the sort of pressure for league position that can be found down the road in the capital.
Reims’ ultras, located behind the goal to the right on the broadcast view, fill up their stand with at least 45 minutes to go before kick-off. They become a sea of red and white, chanting and jumping in unison. But they are not particularly hostile — a few boos for Monaco coming out to warm up — but rather almost choir-like.
Shortly before the match starts, they raise their scarves and unveil a ‘Tribune Jonquetbanner’. It is the name of the stand, paying homage to the late Robert Jonquet, a defender who played over 500 games for Reims between 1945 and 1960.
Reims fans (Liam Tharme/The Athletic)
Reims start front-footed and pin Monaco back. They have 20 crosses in the first half, their most yet under Still, but the finishing is wayward and at times the final pass is off. They struggle to defend against Monaco’s advancing wing-backs, Still having picked his typical 4-3-3. Left wing-back Ismail Jakobs puts Monaco ahead just before half-time, arriving unmarked to meet a cross dropping at the back post.
A three-minute collapse at the start of the second half then puts Monaco out of sight. Balogun, inevitably, scores on his return to Reims, firing in Monaco’s second with the aid of the deflection.
After the third goes in, Reims huddle in their own half and captain Abdelhamid gives out instructions. They rally. Teuma breaks lines and gets them upfield. They have consistent success through diagonals to Ito on the right, but none of his 14 crosses finds a team-mate.
Teuma’s 57th-minute penalty is nothing more than a consolation as the match finishes 3-1.
Not Reims’ night, but the ultras don’t care. They co-ordinate a massive bounce as full-time approaches.
On the other side of the canal is Reims’ actual cathedral and its spires.
The Notre Dame Cathedral, alongside the city’s Saint-Remi Basilica, Tau Palace and Saint-Remi Abbey Museum, were made UNESCO heritage sites in 1991 — a year before Still was born.
Reims’ Notre Dame Cathedral (Liam Tharme/The Athletic)
These are buildings that have, like the city’s football club, constantly been restored; the cathedral burned down in 1210, there was a roof fire in 1481, and it was most significantly restored following the First World War, when 80 per cent of Reims was destroyed in the fighting.
France’s kings had their coronations in Reims between 1027 and 1825, and when the club unveiled a new crest in 2020 they added a crown. Their old one had included a wine bottle atop a football, and they could no longer use it after a law was introduced that restricted alcohol advertising.
Now the city is witnessing a new reign, that of Still, whose team have lost just 10 league games since his arrival — only PSG, Lens, Lille and Nice have lost fewer among the 16 teams who have played both seasons in Ligue 1 since he was appointed.
With the reduction of Ligue 1 from 20 clubs to 18 this season, Reims have played the equivalent of a full season under Still and earned 56 points. They never won that many in their nine Ligue 1 seasons when the division had 20 teams.
Still might not have Reims playing Champagne football in the traditional sense, of high possession and elaborate passing sequences, but they are effervescent. Going into the October break, they had attempted the most tackles, made the third-most interceptions and committed the fourth-most fouls in Ligue 1.
They are not passive defensively, and regularly launch transitions following midfield regains. Balogun emphasised the “quick transitions” last season, when Reims played the second-most through balls in the league. Over the first eight games in this one, they were fifth for switches of play and sixth for through balls, while only Brest having attempted more long passes (defined as those covering 30-plus yards).
Reims’ 51 open-play sequences of 10-plus passes were the third-fewest in the league going into this month’s international break, and their directness often catches opponents out.
Pre-game against Monaco, during the call-and-response for the starting XI (the public-address announcer calls the player’s first name, the crowd shouts the surname), they finished with three renditions of “Will”…”Still”.
Over the summer, Still signed a contract extension until 2025 and appointed his younger brother Nicolas as a first-team coach.
There are no question marks over his future, and for good reason. Bringing back the days of European finals and title wins might be a way off yet, but Still has restored Reims.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Will Still; Jean Catuffe via Getty Images)