FC Nantes published on 17 May 2026 the lineup Vahid Halilhodzic selected for the final-day match against Toulouse FC, a fixture scheduled to kick off at 21:00 at the Stade de la Beaujoire.
The announcement lands on the 34ème journée of the championship and comes as Nantes received Toulouse FC on Sunday evening, 17 May 2026, with the club posting the team sheet ahead of the 21h kickoff.
This is the final match of the season and the sheet is the clearest public sign of how Halilhodzic intends to close it: who will start, who will sit on the bench and which players are trusted for the last ninety minutes at home.
Context deepens the moment. Nantes had already been relegated to Ligue 2 since the 33rd matchday after a 0-1 defeat at Lens, a result that decided the club’s fate before the final whistle of the calendar. The match at the Beaujoire is therefore a last act rather than a survival fight: a final-day curtain for a campaign that was settled the week before.
The club’s internal picture that Sunday contained small surprises. Waldemar Kita and Franck Kita were absent from the presidential tribune for the final match. Earlier in the day, the club’s owner-president and the deputy general director had lunched with the players before leaving Nantes, a sequence that left the presidential box empty for kickoff.
That sequence creates a tangible tension around the team sheet Halilhodzic released. The coach has named his lineup for a game that will carry more symbolism than consequence: proud performance, send-off for some players, and the final public audit of a season that ended in relegation. At the same time, the visible absence of the club’s top leaders in the box — after a midday appearance with the squad — underlines a gap between the internal life of the club and its public face on match night.
For fans tracking nantes vs toulouse online and in the stadium, the published lineup is the immediate story. For the club and its coach the selection is a practical answer to a sequence of bad results; for supporters it will be the first opportunity to see how players respond to being on the losing side of a season when the league standing can no longer be changed.
At 21:00 at the Stade de la Beaujoire, Halilhodzic’s named eleven will step onto the pitch and test whether the selection can produce a performance that alters the tone of this closing night. The match itself will provide the final measure of a season already decided: a single game that can offer a measure of pride, or at least a better ending, but cannot reverse relegation.
