AS Saint-Etienne : Friendly - Saint-Etienne largely has a Nice that was missed in the second half

Denis Bouanga in action. (N. Luttiau / The team)

Friendly

Second friendly match of the season for the two teams but dynamic inverted for Saint-Etienne and Nice. ASSE has a second success (4-1) while the Aiglons concede a new setback. The meeting delivered a lot of lessons.

Twenty minutes and then (almost) everything. The supporter ofOGC Nice who only watched the start of the meeting between his family this Friday eveningAS Saint-Etienne must not have understood much, when looking at the result. After bowing on the lawn of the Parc OL last weekend, the Aiglons quickly took control of operations in Forez before quickly missing almost everything. Everything had started well, however. In the wake of a large domination, Kephren Thuram logically gave the advantage to his own (0-1, 15th), following a good collective pressing and a nice service of the stirring Hicham Boudaoui. Problem for Patrick Vieira’s men, arranged in 4-3-3 around the Pierre Lees-Melou-Danilo-Thuram trio: this perfect start did not find a follow-up.

Pressing and rapid attacks for the Greens …

Instantly after this opening of the score, those of Claude Puel managed to reverse the balance of power thanks to … pressing. Pressure at all times – or almost – that allowed the Greens to equalize before the break. After the Nice rear guard got scared on several occasions by systematically trying to relaunch short, the Saint-Etienne rookie Jean-Philippe Krasso signed his second achievement in as many meetings, on a corner (1-1, 41st). And if the bar had not got involved, Denis Bouanga would have given the advantage to his people without much to complain about. In other words, Vieira and his staff had a lot of work at the break.

… work for Vieira

And even more work on the board after the incoming Charles Abi scored the second goal of the premises, a few seconds after the return of the locker room, following a good pressing (decidedly) by Whabi Khazri (2-1, 46th). And we hadn’t seen anything yet! Unleashed, the Saint-Etienne entrants (the team was completely changed at half-time) quickly added up. On a counter attack, Yvan Maçon offered his first goal to the big boys (3-1, 52nd), before the striker Abi turned into a passer for Maxence Rivera (4-1, 56th). A goal 100% generation Gambardella 2019 which gave the reunion of the Greens with the Cauldron a very nice look. The rhythm could fall back to him and Vieira start to work on the best way to find the way to victory and – above all – to find consistency and solidity.

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