With a hat-trick from Zuriko Davitashvili, Saint-Etienne dominates Auxerre (3-1) and leaves the red zone

The Greens have found their new star. Zuriko Davitashvili scored all three goals in Saint-Etienne’s victory over Auxerre on Saturday during the 7th day of Ligue 1 (3-1). The Georgian’s hat-trick (15th, 54th and 86th) against the weak defense of AJA allows ASSE to jump from 17th to 12th in the ranking and overtake its opponent. Enough to delight Geoffroy-Guichard’s audience.

Building on its recent great victory over Brest (3-0), AJA has nevertheless entered this duel between promoted players much better. She immediately put a lot of pressure on her opponent, initially unable to break free in her area. Except that Saint-Etienne was then able to take advantage of wide boulevards after managing to escape from the pressure of the visitors, who had to deal with the last second withdrawal of their captain and defensive pillar Jubal, affected during the warm-up.

Deprived of their captain, Gabriel Osho, Clément Akpa and Sinaly Diomandé very quickly took to the water against the Saint-Etienne waves embodied by the speed of Ben Old, Ibrahim Sissoko and Davitashvili. The New Zealander misplayed a first express counter-attack (4th), when the Georgian slipped when finishing the second (7th). But the former Bordeaux player recovered less than ten minutes later by placing a beautiful curling shot from the right into the opposite corner to open the score (1-0, 15th). Davitashvili thus opened his account with ASSE.