OSC Lille held its press conference in Salzburg on Tuesday.
GEPA images

For almost a decade, Paris Saint-Germain has been the measure of all things in France’s Ligue 1. Since the 2012/13 season, only AS Monaco has had the privilege of interrupting the sole rule of the capital city for a year. Until the OSC Lille came. Because the team from the north of the country surprisingly won the title in the past season and left Krösus PSG behind, mainly thanks to an outstanding defense – Lille only conceded 23 goals in 38 games. After the big sensation, however, there was a small upheaval in the summer, with Mike Maignan (AC Milan) and Boubakary Soumare (Leicester City) leaving the club, as well as champion maker Christophe Galtier (Nice).

Not an easy task for neo-coach Jocelyn Gourvennec either, who has made a less than ideal start to the season with Lille. In the league, after only eight games, Paris are already 13 points behind, but recently his team celebrated two 2-1 wins over Strasbourg and Reims. “The players have realized what you have to do regularly: be more constant, harder, collectively stronger Red Bull Salzburg convinced. “We want to continue like this, the team is hungry.”

No one will die as a favorite

The only 21-year-old Timothy Weah, who is expected to celebrate his debut in the top class in the city of Mozart, was also “hungry” and “ready”. “I feel like it, everyone feels like it,” said the native American. He expected “a very good game” against Salzburg, but at the same time warned of the “many talents” in the Bulls’ ranks. In a similar vein, Gourvennec also suggested: “It’s a very technical and dynamic team that pushes a lot. They have enormous power, you have to be very good to resist that and cause problems for them.”

These words, they sound a bit like Salzburg coach Matthias Jaissle, who had assigned the role of favorites to the guests from France at his press conference. However, Gourvennec didn’t want to know anything about that: “What you can say today is that Salzburg is very strong at home in the Champions League. Only a few teams like Bayern and Naples could win here. (…) That will be a big challenge for us.”