Two late goals for Olympique de Marseille kept their hopes of a UEFA Champions League spot next season alive with a 2-1 comeback win over AS Monaco in Sunday’s late Ligue 1 match.
It took the Principality side just one minute to take the lead after Joao Moutinho pounced on a defensive mistake, but Marseille hit back with 10 minutes to go as Andre Ayew headed home his ninth goal of the season, before Romain Alessandrini secured the three points with just three minutes to play.
Since coming back from the international break at the start of last month, one-time leaders Marseille’s title hopes have evaporated and their Champions League aspirations had nearly followed suit ahead of their first home win since January.
Photo: AFP
The win sends Marseille back into fourth place, just two points behind their opponents.
“As long as Champions League qualification is still mathematically possible, we’ll have faith and hope,” Marseille coach Marcelo Bielsa said.
“Our aim was to win this match, but I’ve seen the table and we’re third. Now we just have to take the points required to keep that place,” Monaco caoch Leonardo Jardim said. “I feel we had a very good first half, we had four good chances to score more than one goal. Had we been more efficient, we’d have scored a second. We could have won that game.”
Monaco had opted for a defensive formation, with former Chelsea defender Ricardo Carvalho moving up into the midfield alongside Geoffrey Kondogbia to replace captain Jeremy Toulalan, who was just back from injury and started on the bench.
Bielsa wanted his Marseille side to bombard the visitors early on and gave Romain Alessandrini the nod ahead of struggling Florian Thauvin, while defender Rod Fanni was also benched.
However, Monaco were the ones on the front foot from the off, with Portugal midfielder Moutinho scoring after just 50 seconds.
The perfect start stunned Marseille as it took them 25 minutes to react through an Alessandrini strike, slightly deflected by Aymen Abdennour, that did not worry goalkeeper Danijel Subasic.
Monaco gained confidence and Fabinho tested Steve Mandanda from a distance, before Bernardo Silva hit the post following a Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco run inside the penalty area just before halftime.
However, the second half changed everything as Marseille fought back, with Dimitri Payet and Thauvin piling on the pressure, but it was Ayew who leveled with a powerful header following a good run by Payet on the left, before the France international delivered his 15th assist of the season for Alessandrini.
It was Monaco’s first league loss since a 1-0 defeat at En Avant de Guingamp in early February.
Earlier, AS Saint-Etienne moved closer to the Champions League places with a 5-0 drubbing of OGC Nice.
Goals from Loic Perrin, Jeremy Clement, Mevlut Erding, Max-Alain Gradel and Kevin Monnet-Paquet allowed Saint-Etienne to remain with Marseille on 63 points, behind on goal-difference.
Montpellier Herault, the 2011-2012 champions, also kept their UEFA Europa League chances alive with a last-gap 1-0 win at Racing Club de Lens.
Montpellier remain seventh with two games left, but are only three points adrift of Girondins de Bordeaux in sixth, which will be good enough to qualify for next season’s Europa League as long as Paris Saint-Germain beat second-tier AJ Auxerre in the Coupe de France final later this month.
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