Lyon will be deprived of its striker Malick Fofana for many months and will have to reinvent its attack, starting this Wednesday on the Paris FC pitch as part of the 10th day of Ligue 1.
Deprived for several months of its spearhead Malick Fofana, Lyon must find solutions in attack to stay at the top of the table in Ligue 1, starting Wednesday at Paris FC for the 10th day.
“It will be difficult because Malick was a really important player for us but that’s football and that’s how it is.”confided, fatalistically, OL coach Paulo Fonseca at a press conference. The technician has already announced that the young Portuguese Afonso Moreira (20 years old) would start at the Jean-Bouin stadium.
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He has just scored two goals in two matches, against Basel (2-0) and the victory in the last minutes against Strasbourg (2-1), where he took over for the Belgian winger, evacuated on a stretcher. “We saw that Fofana’s replacement scored a superb goal”notes PFC coach Stéphane Gilli, who finds that Lyon, “a very balanced team”is still as strong without its dynamiter. Moreira, who arrived for two million euros from the Sporting Portugal reserve, is the symbol of OL’s low-cost recruitment this summer. Lively, fast, generous in effort, he must nevertheless channel his game but his percussion and destabilization capacities are real.
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Moreira also Sulc
Its challenge is to move from a status of «supersub» as the starter, performing from the first minute, exactly as Malick Fofana did last season. But Paulo Fonseca also retains the option of Pavel Sulc on the left, the Czech recruited for EUR 7.5 million this summer from Viktoria Plzen.
More of a starter in the Europa League than in L1, his adaptation seems difficult after having played in almost all positions of the attack. He was a center forward against Strasbourg. Like Moreira, Sulc performs better coming off the bench. He has an excellent ratio of three goals to one assist in 509 minutes played between L1 and C3.
“My position is number ten, where I feel the best”he defends himself. “I can move between the lines, make the call behind the defense and I am closer to the surface, to the goal”says the Czech international again. But Fonseca also mentioned other possibilities, that of developing Brazilian defender Abner Vinicius “higher” in the system, or even Rachid Ghezzal, left-handed, unlike Fofana or Moreira who are right-handed. “Depending on the matches, this may constitute solutions. Depending on the players we can change the structure of the team”develops Fonseca.
«Force collective»
The Portuguese relies above all on «la force collective». He lost these individuals capable of creating differences or scoring goals: Alexandre Lacazette, Thiago Almada and Rayan Cherki in the offseason, then Georges Mikautadze at the end of the transfer window and now Fofana. The Belgian international has only scored twice this season and offered an assist, but created many dangerous situations and caused free kicks or penalties.
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Against Strasbourg, Fofana pushed Ismaël Doukouré to score against his side, before the latter injured him. However, in recent weeks, better monitored by his opponents, the striker appeared a little less prominent than last season (eleven goals and six assists in 41 matches). Fonseca had also put him under pressure, and OL were studying the possibility of recruiting in attack in the winter transfer window.
Whatever the post-Fofana solution, the Lyon open game will offer Parisians “perhaps more space than we had against Nantes (2-1), we who like to play”notes PFC defender Thibault De Smet. “Lyon is one of the teams that makes the most mistakes in Ligue 1, and we are the one that makes the least,” remarks Gilli. We also have to win duels, this is the aspect on which we must progress..
“We have to be a little naughtier,” says De Smet, “that doesn’t mean breaking legs, but being more aggressive”. Because “it’s sad to see a player like Fofana get injured,” concludes Gilli, “I would have preferred him to be there”.
