The Greens and the Canaries still neutralize each other. Saint-Etienne and Nantes drew on Sunday during the 20th day of Ligue 1 (1-1) as in the first leg at La Beaujoire in September (1-1). Once again, Antoine Kombouaré's players quickly opened the scoring thanks to Moses Simon (14th). Volunteers, Eirik Horneland's men ended up equalizing with a nice strike from Augustine Boakye (86th). The two teams remain neck and neck in the standings with the Stéphanois play-offs and the Nantes team just ahead.
Back in their Cauldron where they had recently shone against Reims for the great first of their new coach (3-1), the Greens wanted to take matters into their own hands in this match which was expensive in the race to maintain. They monopolized the ball (77% possession at half-time) and pushed hard. Except that they mainly came up against the block of Nantes who were very solid in defense. The overly tender and misguided Zuriko Davitashvili, Lucas Stassin or Djylian N'Guessan, 16, ultimately only took two small shots off target in the first period.
Greens too fragile
Jeered by the public on each touch of the ball because a former Lyonnais, the Nantes goalkeeper Anthony Lopes had almost nothing to do during the first act. His Saint-Etienne counterpart Gautier Larsonneur quickly had to work and save his family against Matthis Abline, who left alone on the right after an error by Mickaël Nadé (6th). Little used but far too crumbly, the Greens' defense was punished by a poor header from Dennis Appiah which Simon took advantage of to open the scoring with a powerful cross shot (0-1, 14th).
Simon now has 5 goals in L1 this season. His team positioned itself higher at the restart and the debates became balanced. Saint-Etienne remained imprecise in front for a long time, notably with an off-target shot from young N'Guesssan (48th). Nantes responded with Bahereba Guirassy, 18, who also narrowly missed the target (50th). Nicolas Cozza almost surprised Larsonneur with a lobbed cross-shot (54th) while Simon lacked a hint of precision to find the target (59th).
-Boakye rewarded
Curiously, ASSE no longer offered anything and its Norwegian coach decided to launch Florian Tardieu and Boakye (60th). The Ghanaian entrant showed up but narrowly missed the top corner with a first good shot (69th). He did it again and finally fired the very first shot on target for the Greens in this meeting (80th). Nantes was stifled again, Nicolas Pallois and Jean-Charles Castelletto gave everything but the Canaries rearguard ended up cracking.
From 25 meters in the axis, Boakye placed a superb shot from the left which deceived Lopes on his right for an equalizer in the form of reward for the efforts made (1-1, 86th).
The point pocketed does not yet help to get the Greens out of the red zone but it could weigh heavily. For Nantes, it is a third consecutive draw in the league. Not really anything to reassure yourself about either.
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