Lille – Fonte: “Paris? We want to do much better than last year”
Heavily beaten (1-5) by PSG to Pierre Mauroy last season, the Mastiffs have the ambition to pose more problems for PSG this Sunday.
Lille found PSG this Sunday, a few months after a heavy defeat at home against players from the capital (1-5).
“A good test for us”
A very bad memory in the north that José Fonte and others will want to erase. “We’re not going to talk about that! It was really a weird, complicated match,” recalls the Portuguese defender in the columns of L’Equipe.
“We want to do much better this year, we want to give something to our supporters, a great victory.
“Paris? They started well, they score goals, they have great players, everyone knows them. But we have our goal, our ambition, our quality too. We look forward to Sunday as a good test for us. “
Among the other memories evoked by the Dogue, the knockout stages of the Champions League lost against Chelsea last season: “An incredible atmosphere, our supporters were magnificent. Did we believe it when Burak opened the scoring? We still believe in it, it’s a football match, everything is possible.
“But the problem is that even if you play well, if you don’t score, it’s always dangerous against a team like Chelsea, he regrets. We play much better than them, on occasions and just before half-time, you concede a goal that you shouldn’t concede. In a competition like that, that’s not possible.”
“Coaching? It’s an option, I have the ambition to try”
The defendant’s experiment also evokes the title won by the northerners in 2020-2021, at the end of an extremely solid season.
“We go into every game with this feeling that we are not going to concede a goal. We knew that if we scored, afterwards, we were going to do our job”, he recalls.
“Everyone is very focused, united, solid, we have one of the best goalkeepers in the world. We feel that no matter who arrives… We have 23 clean sheets (including 21 in Ligue 1)all the same.”
Now 38, Fonte will start thinking about what’s next. But immediately: “Right now, I can’t imagine it. I’m starting to have the feeling that it’s going to happen,” he admits.
“In a year, two years, three years, I don’t know, but it’s going to happen. But to tell the truth, I’m only thinking about the next game.
“Coaching? It’s a real option, I have the ambition to try. I have this chosen thing in me, to help. I like to see players grow, improve.”