On Saturday evening, for the 26th matchday of Ligue 1, OGC Nice hosted Paris Saint-Germain at the Allianz Riviera. Just days after their superb performance against Chelsea, PSG put on a show demonstrating the vast gulf between them and their rivals. It was after a 4-0 victory that the Parisians reclaimed the top spot in the standings, with a game in hand, and left the OGC Nice players frustrated. Nice striker Sofiane Diop reflected on their defeat and the difficulty of playing against Paris.
Diop: “It’s difficult to replay the match after this 4-0 defeat.”
Is there frustration because it was a heavy defeat?
Yes, we had a plan that was working, I think. Then there are some incidents in the game; I’m not going to go into them, it’s up to the referee’s interpretation. Even after that first goal, I think we were still in it. And I think we weren’t clinical enough; we didn’t make enough good plays in the final third.
Against this team, we had very few of those, and the plan was to press them, to be ambitious, and in the end it’s difficult because we got a red card, and against this team, it’s almost impossible to compete with 10 men against 11. There are a lot of positives, though; we’ll have to fight to secure our place in the league.
What’s harder when you play against PSG, the attacking work or the defensive work?
Both. Defensively, I had a specific instruction: to mark their playmaker. They quickly figured it out, and it worked at first. And when we won the ball back, the most effective thing to do was to capitalize on it quickly because their strength is their counter-pressing ability.
That’s where we were most vulnerable. We tried it, and it worked well initially, and we also opened ourselves up a lot. It’s difficult to analyze the game after this 4-0 defeat, but we need to learn from this match to move forward.
