Franck Haise left Graz with a point for Rennes, but Wednesday’s 0-0 draw carried an unwanted historical weight. The French coach has now gone 17 Europa League matches without a victory, extending the longest such sequence in the competition’s modern era.
Rennes’ stalemate in Austria was Haise’s first Europa League fixture in charge of the Breton club, yet it prolonged a run built largely during his time at Nice. Across the 2024-25 period with the Côte d’Azur side, he recorded three draws and 11 defeats in the competition. Before that, Lens had taken one draw and one defeat under him in 2023-24.
The 17-match run consists of five draws and 12 losses. It places Haise well clear of Dutch coach Ron Jans, whose longest winless Europa League spell lasted eight matches, while a further 28 managers have reached sequences of six games without success.
A European record within reach
Haise’s draw at Sturm Graz has also moved him into sole possession of second place for the longest winless streak by a manager across all UEFA club competitions: the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.
Only Ante Simundza has endured a longer sequence. The Polish coach went 18 European matches without a win between 2014 and 2021, a spell made up of 14 games with Maribor and four with Mura.
Rennes host OFI Crete at Roazhon Park on 15 October. Should Haise fail to win that match, he would equal and then move beyond Simundza’s mark as the coach with the longest run without a European victory. No manager has produced a comparable Europa League sequence since the competition was renamed and reformatted ahead of the 2009-10 season.
There is another active challenger. Slavia Prague coach Jindrich Trpisovsky is currently on 16 European matches without a win after his side’s recent 3-2 Champions League defeat to Lens. His forthcoming schedule offers no guarantee that the Czech manager will halt his own run quickly.
Haise has won in Europe before
The numbers do not tell the full story of Haise’s continental career. Unlike René Girard, he has previously experienced major European nights with a French club.
During Lens’ 2023-24 Champions League campaign, Haise led the club to a 2-1 victory over Arsenal on 3 October 2023 and another 2-1 win against Sevilla on 12 December 2023. Since that Sevilla result, however, he has not won another European match.
Girard remains the only French manager to have coached in European competition without recording a single victory. His teams, Montpellier and Lille, went 12 matches without winning on the continental stage.
Across European competitions, Haise’s win percentage stands at 8.7%, placing him among the 10 lowest figures for coaches with substantial records. Girard remains on zero, while Slovenian manager Darko Milanic has a 5.6% success rate from spells with Maribor, Sturm Graz, Slovan Bratislava and Pafos. Former Everton and Rangers manager Walter Smith sits at 6.3%.
The Europa League campaign has only just begun for Rennes. A strong run in the competition would quickly change the tone around Haise’s record, but for now the draw in Graz has pushed him deeper into a statistical corner of European football he will be desperate to leave.
