Lions made a great come back against Shanghai Cosmos

Last Saturday, we were playing a against Shanghai Cosmos for the penultimate game of the season 2023/2024. The temperature had risen to over 30 degrees and the pitch was in great green condition.

Shanghai Cosmos started well with a good defensive organization. We on the other hand, didn’t start well… Football is a difficult game when basics ingredients are missing… We lost too many balls, were too static and couldn’t hold the ball upfront. We got punished when a back ball to our keeper was intercepted by Comos’ fast striker… Othmane had his own theory why the ball lacked a bit of speed. At then end, we were 1-0 down!

Instead of this being a wake up call, we kept lacking inspiration… Soon we lost a ball upfront, Cosmos went through our midfield and had no problem to score their second goal. We had to take some action and while we could have taken off the whole squad we did take 3 players off and replaced them with our younger players. It did help as we created more opportunities and Cosmos became less dangerous.

The half time break was the perfect chance to have hard words among ourselves and we all agreed to fight back.

It worked as from the start of the second half we were a changed team fighting for every ball and pushing forward. We thought we got a penalty when Charlie was pushed in his back… The referee put the whistle in his mouth but for a mysterious reason he decided not to blow it. However, 5 minutes later justice was done when Arnold moved away from his opponent and blast the ball with his left foot in the top corner.

Our spirit was lifted and the game was ON! Arnold our danger man was in good form and Cosmos could only stop him with a foul in the penalty box. This time the penalty was given! Othmane stood up as a true captain to take the responsibility… Even an act of true unsportsmanship by a Cosmos player could not stop him to score our well-deserved equalizer 2-2.

We didn’t stop here and were chasing with our whole team a third goal. It come by a scrimmage in the box after a free kick from the side and it was Othmane again scoring with a tap-in from close range.

Cosmos realized what was unfolding and decided to push forward in the last 10 minutes. We thought they scored but a “wunderbar” save from our keeper Marcel prevented the goal.

It was joy and smiles everywhere when the final whistle came. It was a great performance of all players in the second half and we showed our real Lions’ spirit.