The Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu stadium, not far from the Allée des Chevrets, will now have its own name. You will have to call him Mickaël-Landreau complex, named after the former international goalkeeper who worked for FC Nantes. It was the municipality’s football club that made this choice in agreement with the municipality, a few years after the complete renovation of the football complex. The inauguration takes place this Saturday, August 27, from 11:30 a.m.in the presence of Mickaël Landreau.
I asked myself: “Why me?”
A decision that has both delighted and surprised the main interested party. “Usually it is posthumously that a player has a stadium in his name, he smiled. I asked myself: “Why me?”. I needed to discuss with the elected officials of Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu, to understand the club’s project, and the reasons why they chose me, so that we could go this long way. together.”
The club wanted the name of a Nantes sportsman
“TO Saint-Philbert, all sports venues are named either by the name of an Olympic city or an athlete“, explains Frédéric Soret, assistant to the sports of the city.We therefore asked the club to find out which name spoke to them the most and they wanted a Nantes athlete. They ended up opting for Mickaël Landreau“. A choice that owes nothing to chance, because the player is from Machecoul (commune stuck to Saint-Philbert) and marked the history of FC Nantes with more than 350 games played, including the first played at the age of 17.
If Mickaël Landreau has never lived in Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu, he remains the region’s emblematic player, according to Patrice Gauthier, co-president of the town’s football club: “It’s a name that came naturally. Trained at FC Nantes, he had a great career at PSG, Lille and Bastia. He also played for the France team. A player in the area who has a record like that of Mickaël, there are not many.”
Patrice Gauthier and Frédéric Soret are expecting more than 700 people for the inauguration of the stadium, in a town with 8,700 inhabitants and 550 football club members.