For the hell of it, I decided to watch the French Cup match between Lille and CFA side Colmar. I mostly like to watch these French Cup matches because it gives me a chance to see the talent on the amateur level. While most of us expected Lille to crush the small Alsace side, that was not to be the case.
While Rudi Garcia decided to bring his “B Team” (which included Robert Vittek, Ludovic Obraniak, Stephane Dumont and the goaltender Ludovic Butelle, who started most of the games at the start of the season), Lille should have had the upper hand on the amateur team. But Colmar came out to play, put pressure on Lille the entire 120 minutes, and secured a win during the PKs, which ended with a staggering 10-9 result.
Colmar started off the match looking to pressure Lille offensively. While this was the case early on, I would just assume that Lille was just laying back for the first few minutes and waiting to pile on the pressure. But Lille rarely applied any offensive pressure, and most of the play took place in the Lille half of the pitch. Former Cameroon international Guy Armand Feutchine provided much of Colmar’s offensive threat.
As time clicked away in regulation, it looked more and more like we were heading into extra time. But four minutes into extra time, ex-Troyes midfielder Cedric Faivre looked to have scored the winning goal for Colmar. Instead, in a move that looked nearly exactly like the Chamakh-Mandanda incident from last week, Faivre was given a red car.
With the Ligue 1 side now playing against a 10-player CFA team, surely Lille was going to end this thing. Right? Again, not so fast. Even with a man down, Colmar continued their offensive pressure. Lille got so desperate at the end, that their “B-Team” needed some of the “A-Team’s” held. Garcia added both Eden Hazard and Mathieu Debuchy during the overtime. Even with Hazard on the field, Colmar continued to dominate.
Then the match went to penalties. Like in every football game, it is 50-50 at this point. Even so, it was interesting to see how the two teams reacted during the PKs. Lille look stone-cold determined to win this thing. On the other hand, the Colmar players were laughing, playing around and pretty much enjoying themselves. For a team that was on the verge of defeating the third best team in Ligue 1, they looked pretty relaxed. Instead of typing it, here is how the last two PKs ended. Lille is in black while Colmar is in green.
…and Colmar pulls off one of the biggest upsets in French Cup history with this amazing win. No matter who you were supporting in this match, this was a big win today for French football. It is matches like this that outsiders like to see. Everyone likes to see the underdog defeat the giants. And this was the story of David and Goliath in it’s purest form. Some might argue that this questions the “quality of Ligue 1″, but I highly disagree.
Both Rudi Garcia and Colmar manager Damien Ott played down the match. Garcia said that this was a chance for his young players to take the pitch, which was true. Most of their back line hadn’t even played a single Ligue 1 match this season. As for Ott, he said that he was disappointed that Garcia brought his “B-Team” and would have liked to have seen how his team would have done against the dominating “A-Team”.
Filed under: LOSC Lille, SR Colmar Tagged: | Guy Armand Feutchine
