What humiliation! Completely helpless against an ultra-realistic Antwerp team, Standard took to the water against Antwerp (2-5). The Great Old relied on Michael Frey and his five accomplishments. The Rouches here missed the opportunity to take the lead in the standings while Antwerp pocketed its first points.
After just five minutes of play, Antwerp is already taking the lead with some superb play from Butez. The people of Antwerp are delighted with a very beautiful play structure that isolates Gerkens in the large rectangle. The former Anderlechtois sees that Michael Frey is all alone in front of the goal and slips the ball to him. The scorer of number 1 concludes the action in front of the downcast eyes of Bodart (6′).
While the first quarter of an hour is not over, Standard must face another hard blow. Hit on the back, Klauss fails to continue the game and must leave his partners. It gives way to Amallah.
After a rather sluggish start to the meeting, Standard returns to his meeting. Let it go (19′), Raskin (22 ‘) and Cimirot (25 ‘) come to light, without success. The first very big opportunity in Liège finally arrives from the feet ofAmallah who rolls up his strike but has to bow to a superb parade of Stop (32′).
While we seemed to be heading towards a Liège equalizer, Antwerp doubled its lead. Following a loss of ball of Bastien, Gerkens trouve Fischer on the left side who enters the game and tries his luck. The ball is deflected by Bodart in the feet of Frey who only has to push the ball into the net (37 ‘).
Sclessin shakes in added time when Verstraete has a well placed free kick but sends the ball a short yard to the side. The score does not move any more before the break.
At the break, Mbaye Leye is forced to try something and brings in Dønnum in the place of Sissako. Very quickly, Standard closed the gap via Muleka, author of a very good control after a pass from Amallah (54 ‘). The public starts to believe it again when the game goes completely crazy.
In the process, Benson Bodart deceives but the goal is canceled for an obvious foul by Frey (57 ‘). The Antwerp did not let itself be defeated and saw its home scorer register its third goal by taking a cross from Gerkens in the net, taking advantage of the disastrous placement of the Standard defense (58 ‘). In the form of his life, the Swiss striker will even register two new roses. In the 20 meters, Frey does not ask a question and deceives Bodart with a cross strike (61) before driving the point home a few minutes later to score his fifth goal of the game (67 ‘).
At the end of the match, Antwerp offers itself the luxury of spinning by raising Michel-Ange Balikwisha for the last twenty minutes of the match under the boos of the Liege public.
Despite the impressive gap, Standard did not give up and closed the gap thanks to Denis Dragus less than a minute after his rise to the game (76 ‘). The ruffles continue to grow and even offer themselves several huge opportunities via laife (83 ‘), Dragus (84) and Bastien (90’) but do not manage to put a third and therefore ultimately lose 2-5 while Balikwisha came very close to the sixth goal from Antwerp in the last seconds of the time regulatory. Even if the score is very severe, such a defeat could leave traces in the minds of Mbaye Leye and his players after an interesting start to the year.
The Standard therefore misses the opportunity to take first place in the ranking while Antwerp pocketed its first three points of the season.
