Bold build-up and defensive discipline: Why Maxime D’Ornano’s Rouen are Championnat National promotion contenders – tactical analysis

FC Rouen 1899 earned promotion to France’s third tier, Championnat National, for the 2023/24 season under their 42-year-old manager Maxime D’Ornano. At the time of writing, they’ve played 10 games and earned 17 points, placing them fifth with a game in hand on all but five other sides in the league, including three of those positioned above them.

They’re unbeaten in their four home games this term (winning two and drawing two), while their away record stands at two wins, three draws and one loss.

Rouen are the second team D’Ornano has got promoted to the third tier, having done the same with his previous club, Stade Briochin, back in 2019/20. The Normandy-based club were in the fifth tier as recently as 2018/19, which emphasises how impressive a job the current side and, indeed, their coaches are doing to have them in the position they currently occupy in Championnat National.

It’s been 20 years since Rouen played in Ligue 2 — 39 since they had a Ligue 1 campaign. The top flight is still a long way off, but at the moment, they’re closer than they’ve been in quite some time to climb back to the second rung of the French football ladder.

With that said, we mustn’t get too far ahead of ourselves here. It’s still fairly early days in the 2023/24 season. A lot of football is yet to be played, and Rouen face stiff competition for promotion to the second tier.

This tactical analysis aims to break down D’Ornano’s winning approach with Rouen to determine how Les Diables Rouges have got off to such a great start this term. We’ll analyse some key factors in their tactics resulting in their positive performances and lay out how D’Ornano is achieving such great results just a season after earning promotion to this division.

Build-up play: the goalkeeper’s involvement

Rouen have been impressive in possession this season. They’re a reasonably possession-based side, boasting the sixth-best average possession percentage in France’s third tier right now, and they’ve played the third-most passes per 90 (427.34) in the league, highlighting some key statistics relating to their style of play.

Rouen, under D’Ornano, are quite patient with the ball, even when starting their attacks from the goalkeeper. They don’t generally launch the ball forward; they prefer to build in a more systematic, short pass-heavy manner. This has resulted in their high passing rate (passes per minute of possession) at 14.6 for 2023/24 — the third-highest in Championnat National.

Here in figure 1, we see Les Diables Rouges’ general offensive shape, with the ‘keeper stepping out between the two centre-backs who’ve split wide, pushing the full-backs further upfield.

The wide attackers will typically come inside a bit at this point. At the same time, the central midfielders stagger their positioning to all be standing on different horizontal and vertical lines — a standard principle for facilitating quicker and easier ball progression while being more difficult for the opposition to mark.