Two victories, one defeat: this is the results of the three French representatives engaged in the Europa League. If the week had started badly on Wednesday with the new defeat of the OGC Nice, beaten 2-1 at home by AS Rome, Lille and Lyon straightened the bar on Wednesday.
Opposed to Brann Bergen at home, the LOSC certainly had to wait for the last minutes of the game to see Olivier Giroud to decision, but the men of Bruno Genesio assured the essential by winning 2-1. In the process, Olympique Lyonnais, abused at the start of the meeting but still so solid defensively, recovered from a flash of genius to Tanner Tessmann at the start of the last quarter of an hour to win 1-0 in Utrecht and perfectly launch its European campaign.
And thanks to these two victories, France reinforced its fifth place in the UEFA ranking. With now 68,819 points on the clock, it now displays 6.953 ahead of the Netherlands and 10,153 on Portugal, its first two pursuers.
Belgium is still getting closer
However, the threat is real. It only concerns only next season, but Belgium never ceases to reduce the gap. After the two victories of Bruges against Monaco (4-1) and the Union Saint-Gilloise on the lawn of the PSV (3-1), last week, in the Champions League, Genk in turn succeeded in the Europa League by going to win 1-0 with the Glasgow Rangers.
With now 56.150 points on the clock, Belgium still displays 12,669 points behind France, but in a year, when the points of the 2021-2022 season will no longer be taken into account, the gap will decrease drastically. France had indeed scored 18,416 points this season against 6.6 for Belgium, a differential of 11.816. Clearly, fifth place will be under threat.
