Champions League
Lille have a big task ahead of them as they prepare to meet Porto on Wednesday evening (19.45 / 20.45 CEST on Bein 1). Having beaten Grasshopper of Zurich, making less of an impact than at the recent World Cup, 2-0 (Sebastien Corchia 30′, Ryan Mendes 49′) in Zurich, they could only manage a 1-1 draw (Florent Balmont 19′, Abashi 33′) at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, with their opponents playing with ten men for the last 20 minutes.
Porto are coming straight in at the play-off stage having come third in the Primeira Liga behind Benfica and Sporting. They feature some familiar names, including Maicon and man-of-a-thousand-memes Bruno Martins Indi in central defence, Marseille-born Nabil Ghilas, and ex-Rennes winger Yacine Brahimi, who got the winner for Granada against Barcelona in La Liga last season, and also had a decent World Cup with Algeria (one goal, one assist). Not to mention Ricardo Quaresma, Jackson Martinez, Cristian Tello, Juan Quintero and Spanish youth star Oliver Torres.
Porto beat Maritimo 2-0 in the first game in the Primeira Liga with goals from teenage debutant Ruben Neves on 11 minutes and Martinez in injury time. Lille, meanwhile, are continuing a shaky start after losing three of their four pre-season matches, and despite apparently attractive opposition as Ligue 1 restarted. On the opening day they drew 0-0 at home to newly-promoted Metz, and could only beat newly-promoted Caen 1-0 through a Divock Origi penalty (not a penalty – ed.) when their opponents had already lost two players to injury and then lost their other fullback to a red card (not a red card – ed.). Lille dominated possession but the goal was their only shot on target, which perhaps doesn’t bode well for a change to last season’s failure-to-score theme. Like we said, big task, big ask.
Europa League
On Thursday, the schedulers have helpfully ensured only a 15-minute overlap between the two games, as Saint-Etienne travel to Karabükspor (18.00 BST / 19.00 CEST – not televised) and Lyon host Romanian cup-winners FC Astra Giurgiu (19.30 BST / 20.30 CEST Bein 1).
Seeing that Karabükspor finished seventh in the Super Lig last season, we assumed they’d had a decent cup-run, but it turns out to be slightly more involved than that. The Turkish side feature former Nice (and briefly PSG) centre back Larrys Mabiala (DRC) and former Lens defensive midfielder Samba Sow (Mali) as well as Burkina Faso striker Abdou Traore (no, Bordeaux fans, not that Abdou Traore… ed.) and Nigerian striker Joseph Akpala, now transferred in after a season on loan from Werder Bremen. And the fabulously-named goalkeeper Boy Waterman, who wears the number 99 shirt. No, we know very little about them. They saw off Rosenborg on away goals (1-1 aggregate) in the last round, which indicates a degree of steel, albeit the Norwegian dauphins had binned their manager after losing the first leg against Sligo Rovers in the previous round. Fortunately, @Turkish_Futbol knows more:
“Ahmet Ilhan is a tricky forward and Traore is one to keep an eye on, they are pretty well organised and will try to play counter-attacking football”
Galtier’s men will be expected to go through, but the experience of last year’s qualifying, when they lost both legs of the play-off against Esbjerg, an epic 4-3 in Sweden followed by a less edifying 0-1 at the Geoffroy-Guichard (Bayal Sall own goal), will hopefully mean that they don’t take anything for granted.
Astra Giurgiu are even more difficult to look up, and feature… erm… Marseille-born centre back Syam Ben Youssef, who used to play for Bastia (reserves), and Cypriot international midfielder Vincent Laban, who used to play for Nantes (reserves). It says here. Nigerian youth international and centre forward Kehinde Fatai, back from a year on loan at Club Brugge, got a hat-trick in the home leg of their 6-2 aggregate win over Slovan Liberec in the last round, so keep an eye out for him.
Lyon qualified similarly smoothly 6-2 on aggregate over Mlada Boleslav - 3rd in the Czech Republic last season and not, as one of us thought having misread a headline, an interesting new signing for Les Gones - with a 4-1 away hammering (Mohamed Yattara x2, Maxime Gonalons, Samuel Umtiti) followed by a more foot-off-the-gas 2-1 win at Gerland with goals from Alexandre Lacazette and a late winner from substitute Clinton N’jie. They will also be expected to progress, and the following league fixtures look reasonably kind, at home to Lens then away at Metz, so Fournier may be less troubled by selection headaches than Remi Garde was last year.
Bonus - Similar to our traditional game for the early rounds of the Coupe de France, is it a football team or is it a cheese? (helpfully, last year we discovered that several were both), it’s still early enough in the competition to play ‘pick your Game of Thrones character name’ from the fixture list, which we would urge you all to do. We’re going with Neftchi Bakou as sadly Vikingur Gotu didn’t get past HNK Rijeka in the last round. We do not Samba Sow…