Ligue 1: victorious against Strasbourg, Reims anchors itself in the top 5

2023-12-02 00:57:00

After two consecutive defeats, Stade de Reims returned to victory at home (2-1) against Strasbourg, at its worst, on Friday December 1 at the opening of the 14th day of Ligue 1. In freezing cold, the players of Will Still quickly opened the scoring and took over the Alsatians, completely lacking in confidence and success, who nevertheless pushed to come back at the end of the game.

Thanks to this seventh success of the season, the Champenois remain fifth (23 points), but come back to level with Lille which will host Metz on Sunday (5:05 p.m.). The Strasbourg side of Patrick Vieira, fourteenth (thirteen points) have not won in their last seven meetings. Faced with the absence of midfielder Marshall Munetsi, victim of a serious sprain of his right ankle in Rennes at the end of November, Still decided to switch back to a three-way defense, a system with which his team had recently taken seven points in three games.

After conceding six goals against Paris SG (3-0) and Rennes (3-1), the athletic trio Emmanuel Agbadou – Joseph Okumu – Yunis Abdelhamid still showed some signs of feverishness, but up front, Mohamed Daramy weighed heavily .

Strasbourg naive in defense and dangerous in attack

The Danish international was initially at the origin of the first goal, by crossing back towards Amir Richardson who took the ball without control, from six meters, for his third achievement of the season (1-0, 9th) .

Then, launched from his own camp by Maxime Busi, the former Ajax Amsterdam player was on the verge of winning his duel with Matz Sels when Lucas Perrin tackled the ball in his own goal (2-0, 42nd). In the meantime, the Reims winger played against Dilane Bakwa and Marvin Senaya on the right side, but his cross ultimately found no one (18th).

Naive defensively, Racing was nevertheless able to prove dangerous on several occasions. In a very young team (five players aged 21 or under at kick-off), Kevin Gameiro (36 years old) was the most incisive.

The center forward gave the Alsatians hope at the end of the match, by converting a penalty obtained by Angelo Gabriel (2-1, 87th). Before that, he ideally served Mouhamadou Diarra, but Yehvann Diouf made the necessary save (34th) and in the second half, the Champagne goalkeeper once again got the better of Gameiro (70th).

Emanuel Emegha, sixteen years his junior, will long regret not having found the target five meters from the goal, while the score was goalless (8ᵉ). Reims continues its amazing season and moves into the best places in the championship, far from Strasbourg.