Lille largely beat Le Havre (3-0) this Saturday for the 22nd day of Ligue 1. Thanks to a hat-trick from Jonathan David, LOSC was never worried and temporarily climbed to 3rd place in the championship.
Jostled from the start, the Mastiffs had difficulty getting into their match. The Le Havre team was completely uninhibited in the first minutes and appeared threatening. Grandsir presented himself alone against Lucas Chevalier for the first face-to-face of this meeting. But the French goalkeeper prevailed to leave his team afloat (0-0, 2nd). When he got up, he didn’t fail to yell at his defenders to put them back in place. Behind, Paulo Fonseca’s players finally reacted by projecting themselves thanks to Adam Ounas, untenable on his right side.
After a free kick poorly cleared by the HAC defense, Jonathan David found himself alone when the ball fell and shook the Le Havre nets to give LOSC the advantage (1-0, 13th). Dejected by this goal, Lukas Elsner’s men lacked the technical accuracy to worry the locals. Just before the break, Jonathan David was once again perfectly found in the area by Angel Gomes and deceived the Le Havre goalkeeper to make the break (2-0, 44th).
As soon as the restart, Adam Ounas was found in the HAC area. After a good check, he was brought down and the referee did not hesitate for a second before designating the penalty spot. First pushed back, the Canadian Jonathan David scored his hat-trick in two stages (3-0, 48th). Behind, Le Havre did not find the resources to disrupt the Lille block and continued to suffer in this second act. The LOSC players failed to add to the score on a few poorly negotiated opportunities, but the northerners secured the essentials with this big victory.
With this success, the Mastiffs are back on the podium ahead of Monaco for the moment. After the setback against Nice yesterday, they are more than ever back in the race for the Champions League for the end of the season. The next day, they will travel to Toulouse, Sunday February 25 (3 p.m.).
