A late Anthony Modeste header earned Girondins de Bordeaux a 1-1 draw at home to Olympique de Marseille on Sunday and ensured the 2008-2009 French champions avoided defeat in their first game since the sale of Yoann Gourcuff.
Gourcuff joined Olympique Lyonnais earlier this week and in his absence Bordeaux looked set to slip to their third defeat in four games after Lucho Gonzalez gave the visitors a 12th-minute lead.
Marseille had to play for more than an hour with 10 men following the first-half dismissal of Edouard Cisse and they were within two minutes of their first league win at Bordeaux since 1977 when Modeste struck.
PHOTO: AFP
Both sides now have four points from their opening four matches, the same as fellow pre-season title favorites Lyon, leaving all three teams eight points adrift of early leaders Toulouse.
Marseille coach Didier Deschamps handed a debut to striker Loic Remy, while fellow new recruit Andre-Pierre Gignac came on in the second half, but it was last summer’s record signing Lucho who broke the deadlock thanks to a terrific assist from Brandao.
The Brazilian striker left two Bordeaux defenders on the turf after breaking forward from the edge of his own box, before centering for Lucho to clip an adroit half-volley beneath Cedric Carrasso.
The Bordeaux goalkeeper did well to claw away a deflected Taye Taiwo free-kick as the visitors increased the pressure, but Marseille were dealt a heavy blow in the 33rd minute when Cisse was contentiously sent off for sliding in from behind on Jaroslav Plasil.
Bordeaux’s numerical advantage made for an open second half and the hosts were centimeters away from an equalizer when Modeste just failed to get a touch on a Benoit Tremoulinas cross.
Carrasso twisted to repel a well-directed Andre Ayew header on the hour and he kept his side in the game again in the 77th minute when he touched Remy’s low drive onto an upright.
Steve Mandanda’s command of his box at the other end had been equally solid, but in the 88th minute Modeste got across his man to direct a powerful header inside the right-hand post from Plasil’s inswinging cross.
Earlier, Paris Saint-Germain’s defensive frailties were exposed again as they fell to a 3-1 defeat at Sochaux that sent the victors up to fourth.
Sochaux were 3-0 up at halftime after Modibo Maiga, Ideye Brown and Damien Perquis all exploited slack defending by the visitors, who had Jeremy Clement sent off late on for slyly raking his studs down Maiga’s calf.
PSG have now conceded nine goals in their last three games, having lost 2-1 at Bordeaux last weekend and completed an aggregate victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv with a 4-3 defeat in the Europa League playoff round on Thursday.
Auxerre went down 2-0 at Monaco, while Eden Hazard’s second-half equalizer rescued a 1-1 draw for Lille at home to Nice.
French Ligue 1
Team | P | GD | PTS | |
1 | Toulouse | 4 | 6 | 12 |
2 | Stade Rennais | 4 | 4 | 8 |
3 | Montpellier | 4 | 2 | 8 |
4 | Sochaux | 4 | 2 | 7 |
5 | Saint-Etienne | 4 | 1 | 7 |
6 | Stade Malherbe Caen | 4 | 0 | 7 |
7 | Monaco | 4 | 2 | 6 |
8 | Nice | 4 | 1 | 6 |
9 | Valenciennes | 4 | 0 | 5 |
10 | Olympique de Marseille | 4 | 0 | 4 |
11 | Lille | 4 | 0 | 4 |
12 | Lorient | 4 | -1 | 4 |
13 | Paris Saint-Germain | 4 | -1 | 4 |
14 | Girondins de Bordeaux | 4 | -1 | 4 |
15 | Stade Brestois 29 | 4 | -1 | 4 |
16 | Lens | 4 | -2 | 4 |
17 | Olympique Lyonnais | 4 | -2 | 4 |
18 | Nancy | 4 | -4 | 4 |
19 | Auxerre | 4 | -2 | 3 |
20 | Arles-Avignon | 4 | -4 | 0 |
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later