Twenty-one goals buy you the right to say it
Esteban Lepaul has stopped being coy about it. Speaking to Ouest-France on Thursday, the Stade Rennais striker put the ambition on the record. “Play in the Champions League, because that is the number one dream of my career, the one I’ve been aiming for since I was little.”
He picked his moment. Rennes host PSG on Sunday at Roazhon Park, a fixture the LFP shifted to Brittany, and a striker looking to prove last season was not a one-off could hardly ask for a louder room.
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The Golden Boot stayed in Brittany
Lepaul topped Ligue 1 last season with 21 goals. He finished ahead of everything PSG, Marseille and Monaco had up front, which almost never happens in a league where the individual awards tend to follow the payroll.
It changes how the quote reads. Coming from a forward who spent the season out of sight, talk of the Champions League would sound like wishful thinking. Coming from the man who outscored the entire division, it sounds like a plan, and it leaves European recruiters and Rennes circling the same question. How long can the club hold on to him?
Europe first, and he has never done this before
The Europa League comes first. These will be Lepaul’s first European matches at senior level and he is not affecting any calm about it. “I have rarely been this excited!” He thinks Rennes have more than enough to be competitive in the competition.
His targets for the season run along the same track: get back in the hunt for the scoring title, drag Rennes into Europe again. Which means holding his form at the top of Ligue 1 while absorbing a Thursday-Sunday rhythm he has never had to survive. French strikers have been swallowed by that schedule before.
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