Author of a new XXL performance, Brest brought down PSV Eindhoven (1-0), accustomed to European games and who had held PSG in check (1-1) at the end of October. With thirteen points in six days, qualification for the play-offs for the round of 16 could be made official after Wednesday's matches. And a possible direct qualification for the eighth is no longer illusory, the statistician Opta giving one chance in three (32%) of achieving it to Bretons who do not want to “give themselves limits”, proclaimed the sports director Grégory Lorenzi. “Today we have 13 points. Will we be able to take more? I don't know but in any case I can tell you that every time we go on the pitch to win the match, we will do it 100%,” he added.
“The best sleeping pills”
But while everything was jubilation and congratulations, Lorenzi quickly adopted a more pragmatic tone. “Praise is always nice but, as I say, it is also one of the best sleeping pills to put us to sleep,” he said, as a warning.
A true architect of the permanent miracle that is Stade Brestois, thanks to his almost infallible flair for recruitment since he took this position in 2016, Lorenzi recalled that in the championship, the SB29 “is far from being saved” and that “it remains (the) priority”. Because, like Cinderella's carriage becoming a pumpkin again at midnight, Brest “is capable of becoming an average team again” in the championship, he regretted.
In L1, although 11th, the Ty Zefs are only three points ahead of the red zone, with eight defeats and 26 goals conceded in fourteen days, one more setback and 75% of the goals conceded over the entire season. passed.
On Tuesday, however, they were the first team in nine months and 30 matches to muzzle the attack of PSV Eindhoven over 90 minutes. “It went well, because, already, we didn't make any gross errors, which we repeated in the last matches,” underlined coach Eric Roy to explain this performance.
“Soul Supplement”
If goalkeeper Marco Bizot was elected man of the match thanks to some fantastic saves, the coach especially remembers the collective mobilization. When observers said that he “was a little less decisive than last season, it was an overall and collective observation. This evening, when we found this collective again, it also managed to express itself and simply let us be in the match,” explained Roy, who regrets the two very different faces of his team.
“It’s unfortunate to say but I think that, inevitably, there is something more that emerges (in C1…) There is this little extra soul, certainly, in the players who discover this competition”, he lamented.
And it’s not just mentally that the C1 draws on reserves. Physically, Brest is suffering the after-effects. In addition to the six players injured before Eindhoven, striker defender Julien Le Cardinal was added with a hamstring injury, while Abdoulaye Ndiaye played the entire match with a cut on his kick which required seven stitches at the break.
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