As his team begins its European campaign this Tuesday in Lisbon, Bruno Genesio did not want to dramatize the bad patch his team is going through in the championship.
“The weakest team can beat the strongest”insisted Bruno Genesio, Lille's coach, on Monday evening, who is in bad shape with three defeats in a row before his trip to Lisbon against Sporting Portugal on Tuesday (9 p.m.) in the Champions League. In his lair, Sporting will be “favorites” according to Genesio, thanks to his great momentum – leading the Portuguese championship while being undefeated -, the opposite of the spiral of defeats in which the northern club is plunged.
But the former Lyon coach also recalled the conditions in which his OL had achieved the feat of winning in Manchester against City (2-1) in the group stage of the 2018-19 edition. “Before playing against Manchester City, we lost in Caen, we were rubbish, we had a catastrophic match (In reality, Lyon had been held to a 2-2 draw in Caen five days before their victory in Manchester.)», he said. OL were then in a mediocre 7th place in the championship, with only seven points taken out of a possible 15, and were already relegated eight points behind Paris SG.
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“I remember, the very next day, all the predictions from people who knew football, who were betting on the minute in which we would concede the first goal. For some, it was the first, for others, the third, the fifth.”Genesio continued.
“Others were trying to find the number of goals we were going to concede, for some it was five, six, sometimes more… and finally, we won 2-1,” he continued. “I'm not saying that's what's going to happen tomorrow (Tuesday), I'm just saying that's how football is, and that's what makes everyone love football: the weakest team can beat the strongest. The result on Friday can be completely contradicted by the result on Tuesday, and so on when you play every three days.”
