Lille carries out a great operation by beating Slovan Bratislava

2023-10-26 21:03:24

By Le Figaro with AFP

Published 17 minutes ago, Updated now

Cabella and Yazici. PASCAL ROSSIGNOL / REUTERS

LOSC suffered but beat the Slovak club this Thursday evening (2-1). The Dogues take the lead of the group.

Author of a mediocre performance during an hour of play and trailing at home, Losc finally overthrew Slovan Bratislava (2-1) Thursday in the Europa Conference League.

Thanks to this victory, Lille passes its evening opponent and takes the lead in Group A (seven points) ahead of the Slovak club (six). Next comes KI Klaksvik (four), who comfortably beat Olimpija Ljubljana (zero) 3-0 at the same time.

After three days of C4, Losc is therefore in a good position to continue its adventure in European competition. But it was tough at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy! Before the hour mark, the northern club gave the impression of not wanting to play this match. Apathetic in attack and crumbly defensively, Paulo Fonseca’s players did not set any rhythm during this meeting.

Samuel Umtiti passed

On the contrary, Bratislava showed itself to be dangerous from the twentieth minute onwards and took advantage of the extreme excitement of Samuel Umtiti, world champion with the Blues in 2018. Arriving this summer, the central defender first lost a duel at shoulder with striker Aleksandar Cavric, who served Tigran Barseghyan, whose strike did not find the target (21st). In the process, Cavric this time tried his luck outside the penalty area, but was blocked by the hand of “Big Sam”, which escaped the referee’s vigilance.

Then what had to happen happened: Slovan opened the scoring thanks to a nice three-way move deployed on the Lille right side, concluded by Cavric, who beat Umtiti. Trailing, Losc did not wake up except for a header from its scorer Jonathan David (31st).

The first quarter of an hour of the second act was played at the same pace. Lille did not develop more of their game, which the poor state of the pitch after the Rugby World Cup matches is not enough to explain.

After another opportunity, at the penalty point, from Jonathan David, Paulo Fonseca decided to make a triple change (66th). Paid choice. But above all we had to wait for the first error from the hitherto very compact Slovak block: defender Guram Kashia completely missed his recovery, which arrived at the feet of Yazici. A well-executed one-two with Rémy Cabella later, and Losc managed to equalize through their Turkish striker (68th). Dangerous from the moment he entered the game, winger Edon Zhegrova managed a dazzling overflow then a shot well taken by Rémy Cabella to definitively turn the match around (82nd). This is the main thing for Losc.