Saturday 15th August 2026
Sunderland v Stade Rennais – Friendly
Stadium of Light
Kick-Off: 15:00
Tickets & Match Coverage
Tickets: Good luck!
TV/Stream: Full live match coverage is available via safc.com.
Don’t forget to follow the blow-by-blow account of the game on the Roker Report Twitter feed (@RokerReport) and check out the player ratings after the full-time whistle at www.RokerReport.sbnation.com!
The build-up…
It’s the final countdown, and all that. One game and one week away from the real thing starting up again, and we’re back at the Stadium of Light for the first time since that day against Chelsea.
But is this a good thing? Let me ask that question differently – when was the last time you saw us play in a friendly at the Stadium of Light that was a good game with a decent atmosphere thrown in? Maybe it’s just the fact my mind drifts immediately back to the Dafabet Cup and the visit of Celtic, but answers on a postcard.
On this occasion we welcome French side Stade Rennais who finished sixth in Ligue 1 and, like us, qualified for the Europa League. Which means, we also welcome back Eliezer Mayenda only weeks after his move away from Wearside for an opportunity to get a proper send-off.
But getting back to what today means for us, it feels like, going off his two pre-seasons so far, Regis Le Bris will want this to be as close to next week as possible. It’s his last chance to put out the players in the shape we’re likely to see them next week, and also for those players to gather a bit of momentum ahead of our trip to Suffolk next Saturday.
With the niggles impacting Nordi Mukiele and Omar Alderete, a lot of eyes will be on the manager’s plans for our opening day at the back. At the moment it looks like Luke O’Nien will get the opportunity to start this season where he left off last year, but our biggest hint will come in today’s line-up.
As always, we’ll be looking out for little patterns of play and how we’re looking in the press to see how much we might evolve the game plan from last season, but with a low crowd expected and just seven days until the off, it might be a difficult task to get the game beyond walking pace this afternoon.
But as for taking on Rennes, it’s a bit of a historic moment as it’s the first meeting between the two sides. In past seasons it would have felt like one of those fixtures where we were welcoming a very good French side who regularly qualified for Europe and were generally on a different level to ourselves. But not today.