French interior minister Gérard Collomb said intelligence services had foiled two terrorist attacks so far this year.
One of the two attack plotters arrested mid-January had planned to hit a “major sporting facility” in western France, Mr Collomb told Europe 1 radio.
France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency initially believed that the would-be attacker, an 18-year-old Islam convert, was “only” planning to flee to Syria, but discovered that his plans were a lot more sinister after conducting a raid on his home.
The youth had been planning to launch an attack on an “elite” football team and had already scouted out a football stadium, according to Europe 1. He was also trying to get hold of a weapon.
However the attack was still in its “planning stage” and “was in no way imminent,” France’s security chief said.
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The second aspiring jihadist had been plotting a two-part attack: he had planned to target an anti-terror ‘Sentinelle’ troop on patrol and a school in south-eastern France.
The suspect, a 33-year-old Islam convert who had pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video recovered during the police raid, had already acquired bomb-making equipment and was looking to buy a weapon online, security officials said.
Mr Collomb said: “Both plots were detected in their early stages, but what we know for sure is that the [plotters] intended to commit an attack on French soil.
“Because ISIS is disappearing, people are seeking to stage attacks in western countries as a distraction from its defeat.
“Youths were clearly the target in both plots,” he continued, adding that the terror threat to France was “very real”.
The interior minister stressed earlier this year that a total of 20 domestic terror plots had been foiled by French intelligence in 2017.
Mr Collomb said that the terrorist threat to France would “endure for years to come” and remained “high”.