The Marseille team achieved one of their most valuable victories this season and defeated the Lens team 3:1 in a match from the 19th round of the French Ligue 1, sportal.bg reported.
The victory for the Olympians was forged with the goals of Amine Guiry (3’, 75’) and Ethan Nouanere (13’), and the honorary goal for the guests was scored by Ryan Fofana (85’).
With the success, the Provençals approached the first two places in the championship and retained their real chances of fighting for the title.
The match was also of direct importance for The “yellow-reds”, who failed to return to the top, where they were before the start of the round. Yesterday, however, the champion Paris Saint-Germain took their place in their away game at Auxerre and came out on top.
In addition, Marseille managed to regain their confidence after losing 0:3 to Liverpool in the Champions League during the week.
The southerners simply swept their opponent away in the opening minutes and only a quarter of an hour after the first referee's signal they were already leading by two goals. The turning point came from Guiry, who positioned himself well in the penalty area and took the ball to deflect it past the visitors' goalkeeper Robin Risser.
After him, Nouaneri found himself behind the opponent's defenders and sent the ball into the bottom left corner, giving his team a very serious lead.
After this opening shot, the visitors failed to react adequately, while the Provençals very skillfully closed themselves off and did not allow a single dangerous situation in front of their goal until the end of the half.
Instead, the two early goals turned out to be a heavy psychological blow for the visitors, who not only failed to be creative in the foreground, but Wesley Said also received a reckless yellow card.
This trend continued after the break, when Florian Thuvin and Mamadou Sangare were also yellow-carded.
So the logical thing happened in the quarter of an hour Before the end of regular time, Roberto Di Zerbi's men took a classic lead, deciding everything. Weah and Guiry played, and the latter sent the ball into Robin Risser's goal for the third time.
Initially, there were doubts about an offside, but after reviewing the situation through the VAR system, it became clear that everything was within the rules and Marseille officially pulled three goals ahead.
About ten minutes later, the “yellow-reds” scored an honorary goal after Fofana intercepted a cross and unmarked Jeronimo Rulli.
This woke up the guests, who tried to bring back the intrigue for the epilogue of the match, but three minutes before the end of regular time Rulli did not allow Bermont to raise his hands in victory.
Thus, the four minutes of extra time proved to be extremely insufficient for anything other than a victory for the hosts as the final result and the Marseille team congratulated themselves with very important three points.
Next week, on January 28th (Wednesday), Marseille will have an important away game against Bruges in the last round of the main Champions League schedule, which they will have to win at all costs to keep their place in the top 24 and continue to the direct elimination phase.
Lens, for its part, will have a commitment until the weekend, as they are not participating in the European competitions this season club tournaments, and on January 30th (Friday) will face Le Havre.