Paris Saint-Germain will be in unfamiliar company in the Coupe de France quarter-finals on Wednesday when they take on Stade Briochin, a fourth-tier club that have gone from narrowly avoiding extinction to a series of giant killings.
Stade Briochin have beaten higher-level opposition in each of the past three rounds, with the piece de resistance coming in the last-16 when Ligue 1 Nice were dispatched in dramatic fashion. Fellow top-tier side Le Havre suffered the same fate in December.
Centre-back Hugo Boudin was Stade Briochin’s unlikely hero against Nice, scoring an 88th-minute equaliser before snatching a winner in the seventh minute of stoppage time.
The final whistle prompted a pitch invasion at the 11,000-capacity Stade Fred-Aubert in Brittany. For Stade Briochin coach Guillaume Allanou, whose association with the club stretches back three decades, it is a memory that will never fade.
“My first thought at this moment when all the fans were on the pitch was to search for my players,” Allanou tells BBC Sport. “I wanted to be with my staff and my players just together to celebrate this great moment.
“It was unbelievable. It was like we were not in our bodies. It was crazy, emotional. It’s difficult to explain in words.”
The Nice result saw Stade Briochin enter the pantheon of great Coupe de France upsets.
They are in good company, joining US Quevily, third-tier conquerors of Marseille in the 2012 quarter-finals, and Les Herbiers, another third division club who beat RC Lens on their way to the 2018 final. It was PSG who ended their fairytale run at the last hurdle.
Fourth-tier Calais famously made it to the final in 2000, beating reigning Ligue 1 champions Bordeaux in the semis, before losing to Nantes while US Jeanne d’Arc Carquefou, from the fifth level of French football, beat top-tier sides Nancy and Marseille to make the quarter-finals in 2008.
PSG, again, were the side to put an end to their run.
This year, fourth-tier AS Cannes, formerly of the top flight and the club who gave Zinedine Zidane his breakthrough, have already reached the semi-finals after continuing their own remarkable run by beating Ligue 2 Guingamp on Tuesday.
