Lille put in a very big performance last night in Istanbul. Winners 2-1 in the first leg of this third preliminary round of the Champions League against José Mourinho’s Fenerbahçe, the Dogues were destined for Turkish hell. The catastrophic scenario seemed to be confirmed when Bafoué Diakité gave the home team the advantage by scoring an own goal at the very end of the match, pushing both teams into extra time.
More after this ad
Everything was in place for LOSC to falter, but Bruno Genesio’s men finally managed to get out of the Istanbul trap thanks to a penalty awarded in the 118th minute by Spanish referee Sánchez Martínez following a handball in his area by Jayden Oosterwolde. A penalty converted by Jonathan David. After beating Pep Guardiola with OL, Bruno Genesio therefore offered himself the scalp of another renowned coach on the European scene and Lille won the right to play in the play-offs against Slavia Prague. For his part, José Mourinho did Mourinho. Arriving as a star at Fenerbahçe, the Speclal One had the mission of putting the Turkish team back on top of the Süper Lig, but also of qualifying them for the next C1. This early elimination upset the Portuguese who, as is often the case, attacked the referee, particularly because of the penalty conceded at the very end of extra time.
Read Lille: more fear than harm for Lucas Chevalier
« If I speak, I will have problems »
« We lost the chance to play against the best teams in the world. But the fact is that we could never have won the Champions League. We are going to the Europa League. We can do very good things in this competition, but if I speak, I will have problems. I do not want to continue this sentence. We will wait for the Europa League draw. If you are wondering about the rest of my sentence, I invite you to watch the Europa League final Rome-Sevilla played in the 2022/23 season. You will then understand the rest of the sentence. It is the referee’s job not to waste time. He must respect the game. He must make the players respect it. I cannot criticize the opposing teams. They are also trying to get a result. If they took a yellow card in the first 20 minutes, everything would change, but they do not take it “, he confided at a press conference, before continuing.
More after this ad
« Journalists who don’t understand much about football focus too much on data, numbers and statistics. Sometimes statistics don’t reflect the game, sometimes they do. Today (yesterday) two balls hit the post and the goalkeeper made three incredible saves. My team created enough actions to win the game. In the game we played in Lille, we conceded three goals in the game. They played against a team that was not afraid, but their goal was to keep the ball and they do it well. They play hard and press, but despite all the difficulties I mentioned, my players were the players of the game. Dominik Livakovic only made one save in the away game, he didn’t even touch the ball today. These are not excuses, my players did their best, but even the biggest teams in the world suffer from this when they are missing two very important players like Fred and Ferdi Kadıoğlu. » Mourinho a bad loser?
Pub. and 8/14/2024 08:21 AM MAJ and 8/14/2024 12:16
