Mickaël CITONY

Mickaël Citony arrived in Rennes in January 2000 during the winter transfer window. This pacy winger was promised a good future and the club who developed him, AS Cannes. He was following in the footsteps of two other Rennes players who arrived from the same academy setup: Escudé and Primorac. Alas, his trajectory had more in common with that of Primorac than Escudé. As an attacker in a team which was oversubscribed in terms of strikers with the likes of Bardon, Diouf, Nonda and Yapi, Citony only got two brief appearances at substitute, en spent the rest of the time as striker with the CFA (French 4th Division) squad alongside Bailly. In the 2000/2001 season, Stade Rennais recruited Chapuis, Fabiano, Lucas and Turdo for the attacking rôles. Manager Le Guen gave him the same treatment as his predecessor. He was loaned out to Laval in the French 2nd Division in 2001, and scored a solitary goal in 24 appearances. When he returned from his loan spell, he took advantage of the arrival of new Manager Halilhodzic to briefly rediscover the experience of playing in Division 1 (115 minutes of game-time), but he didn’t impress his boss any more than he had with those before him, and Vahid Halilhodzic sent him back to play for the Reserves for the rest of the season. In the 2002/2003 season, he joined Saint-Etienne and played an active part in their return to the top flight.