Paris Saint-Germain and Lens faced off this Sunday at the Parc des Princes in Matchday 4 of the 2025-2026 Ligue 1 season. The match ended in a 2-0 victory for Paris. After the match, Lens coach Pierre Sage spoke at a press conference. He lamented his team’s ineffectiveness, not to mention the improvement in creating chances or the tactical challenges they faced against Paris.
Sage said, “We always find ourselves facing the same reality.”
Pierre Sage, is there a bit of frustration at the end of a match like this?
There’s frustration at not having matched the result, missing the various opportunities we could have taken in this match. To open the scoring, come back, or reduce the deficit at the end. That’s the frustration. But today, there’s also the awareness that we played a match to be there.
But the first part of the answer makes us a little disappointed, because we’re still faced with the same reality.
Sage: “It opens up the realm of possibilities.”
It’s always this offensive problem, the last move or the penultimate move…
Yes, but in any case, we create opportunities for ourselves, and we’ll continue to create them. We create them in different ways, too, so that opens up the realm of possibilities. Now, we’re going to succeed in scoring more goals. We’ve already managed to score five in four matches, so we have to succeed in increasing our scoring average.
In terms of frustration, is it missing a penalty on Florian Thauvin?
I don’t know. In any case, you know my position on this: if the referee made that decision, it’s the right one.
Sage: “They knew how to distribute themselves.”
Collectively, are you satisfied with the set-up?
Yes, even though we struggled for about fifteen minutes on our right flank, where Bradley Barcola was. Not only with the two goals he scored, but also because with Lee, they knew how to distribute themselves: sometimes one on the inside, the other wide, and occasionally both were wide.
It’s an element we struggled to manage. Once we managed to close off those opportunities, they started to unbalance us from further out, with runs coming from behind. I actually think they created their biggest chance that way, when Robin Risser made an important save in the first half.
