French football is celebrating. After the successes of Monaco and Marseille in the Champions League, Lyon and Strasbourg had a string of victories this Thursday evening. The two French clubs took the opportunity to take the lead in their respective competitions, the Europa League and the Europa Conference League.
Strasbourg, with a reshuffled team, brought back a victory from Aberdeen (1-0) on Thursday, synonymous with qualification for the round of 16 even before the final day. In bad shape in Ligue 1 after three defeats in a row, the Alsatians refueled in the north-east of Scotland to bring their total to thirteen units.
Coach Liam Rosenior had put a reshuffled team at kick-off on Thursday, out of necessity (Emmanuel Emegha and Abdoul Ouattara’s package) and to spare his troops before the reception of Lorient on Sunday in Ligue 1. This allowed Martial Godo in particular to shine by scoring (35th, 1-0).
Lyon is assured of competing at least in the Europa League play-offs after beating the Dutch club Go Ahead Eagles (2-1) at Groupama Stadium after a low-intensity match on the 6th day of the league phase. OL occupy first place in the standings with five wins and 15 points, a total equal to that of last season over eight matches.
The Rhone residents, with a very collective offensive animation, completely dominated a fairly weak opponent. They opened the scoring with a goal from Portuguese Afonso Moreira. Go Ahead equalized by taking advantage of a clumsy phase from OL, Corentin Tolisso performing poor control on a too strong restart sent by goalkeeper Rémy Descamps. But Lyon quickly regained the advantage with a goal from Czech Pavel Sulc (11th). Something to reassure yourself for the rest of the competition.
