Abdallah's Late Strike Deepens Lens' Nightmare Week as Marseille Win 2-1

It took Keyliane Abdallah eight minutes to change the whole mood of a season. The 20-year-old had only just come off the bench when the ball fell to him inside the Lens box, and he did what Marseille's expensive attackers had spent most of the evening failing to do: he finished. His strike in the 82nd minute settled a 2-1 win at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis on Sunday, and it left Lens staring at a week they will want to forget in a hurry.

This was a game that started badly for the hosts and never really got better. Marseille were ahead inside two minutes, and the goal was a gift. A defensive error — a loose backpass from Jonathan Gradit — let Amine Gouiri steal in and roll the ball home. It was the worst possible start for a side still carrying the bruises of Wednesday night.

To their credit, Lens steadied themselves. Florian Thauvin, the old head in a young and rattled side, pulled them level in the 20th minute, rising to head home a Florian Sotoca cross. For a long stretch after that, the game settled into the kind of tense, scrappy contest you expect between two teams with plenty to prove. Lens looked as though they might hold on for a point, and on a week like this one, a point would have felt like something to build on.

Then came Abdallah. Gouiri's scuffed effort was blocked, the ball dropped kindly, and the substitute — a player who started the season with the reserve team — drove it home. The Marseille bench erupted. The Lens players stood still. Eight minutes remained, and there was no way back.

The defeat was Lens' third in a row in all competitions, and the context makes it worse. Last weekend, Olivier Giroud scored a late winner for Lille in the derby. On Wednesday, Como thrashed them 9-1 in the Champions League, a defeat that equalled the heaviest in the competition's history. Now this. Last season's Ligue 1 runners-up are 11th in the table, and the slide has been steep. Their fortunes have fallen sharply since Pierre Sage left to take charge of Crystal Palace; his replacement, Dino Toppmoeller, lasted only a matter of weeks, and Yannick Cahuzac's position is now under scrutiny too. A club that was challenging at the top a year ago is suddenly a club with questions everywhere you look.

Marseille, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction. The win lifted them to fourth on 18 points, and it was their fifth successive Ligue 1 victory — a run that has erased a sluggish start to the season. They also beat Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League on Thursday, so the momentum is real. Gouiri, who scored the opener here, has been at the heart of it.

Elsewhere in Ligue 1 on Sunday, Lille climbed to second with a 2-1 win at Rennes, Nathan Ngoy scoring the winner, while Lyon lost 2-0 at Brest. Nice continued their own resurgence with a 2-0 win at Angers, their fourth victory in five league matches, and Monaco slipped to seventh after conceding a 90th-minute equaliser in a 1-1 draw at promoted Le Mans — a fifth league game without a win for the principality side.

But the story of the night belonged to Bollaert, and to a 20-year-old substitute who reminded everyone that football's oldest truth still holds: one moment, one finish, and a whole week looks different. For Marseille, it was the perfect ending to a fine run. For Lens, the nightmare goes on.