Charleroi won 2-1 against Sint-Truiden. An excellent operation in the fight for maintenance.
Charleroi and Felice Mazzu would undoubtedly have preferred a reunion in another context: the trip from Saint-Truiden to Mambourg had more than the air of a six-point match. Indeed, Sporting is the first team outside the red zone, three points ahead of…the Canaries. Between a regrouping or seeing the gap widen, the 90 minutes could decide a lot of things.
Rik De Mil chose stability by renewing the eleven defeated in Louvain, while still being forced to restart Check Keita in defense following the suspension of Stelios Andreou. In front, Happy Mazzu deplored the weakening of its core, contaminated by a virus during the week.
A pleasant start to the match
Virus or not, the game started with a bang: after two minutes, the two goalkeepers had each already made a save. Sint-Truiden took matters in hand by going very high, which left spaces for Charleroi to take advantage of to leave, enough to offer us a match which went from one rectangle to another.
But after the first quarter of an hour, the visitors began to lower their flag. Charleroi took the match in hand and continued to combine around the opposing rectangle, with this characteristic imprecision in the last gesture.
The Zebras, however, had the good taste to take advantage of their opponent's big mistake shortly before half-time. On a ball in Adem Zorgue's space, Bruno Godeau completely missed the target, which Daan Heymans took advantage of to crucify Kokubo and thus open the scoring.
Rik De Mil's troops could even have made the break in added time, Nikola Stulic also made the nets tremble, on the lookout to take the ball poorly returned by the defense after a Perfect Guiagon festival to punch through the axis. But the Serbian was flagged offside, with the first half ending with a VAR intervention to confirm the initial decision.
The only false note of the first act, the exit of Daan Heymans at rest, victim of a bad landing in the lower back. De Mil, however, found his smile again a few minutes after the restart with the 2-0 goal. After a nice breakthrough on the right side, Jeremy Petris center back for Yacine Titraoui, quicker to spring and place out of reach of Kokubo to make the break (2-0).
Faced with a visibly weakened Sint-Truiden team, the hardest part was done. The Canaries seemed groggy for a long time. Their reaction in the last quarter of an hour, with a post from Isaias Delpupo and the reduction of the score byAdriano Bertaccini approaching added time were not enough to claim something today, despite some last scares experienced by the Zebras in the moneytime.
After the defeat in Louvain, here is a victory which reassures Charleroi, now six points from the red zone…and six points from the top 6. The situation is more problematic for Saint-Trond, which seemed well on track to escape the zone red but who is now struggling a little more and finds himself left behind.
