France
Ligue De Football Des Hautes De France
Coupe De La Ligue Seniors Quarter Final
Wednesday 8th May 2019
Kick Off 15.00 Actual 15.02
Lille Olympique Sportive Fives 2 Itancourt Neuville 3, attendance 102
12’ 0-1
19’ 1-1 (pen)
27’ 1-2
67’ 2-2
84’ 2-3 (pen)
@ Stade Marcel Duhoo
80 Rue Du Long Pot
59000 Lille
€3 Admission
No Programme.
With it being a Public Holiday in France, it was a perfect opportunity to make another day trip across The Channel. As we were heading to Belgium (where it wasn’t a Public Holiday) for an evening match anyway, then this fitted in perfectly and was no more than five minutes off route, so it took no persuasion of the fellow passengers to add this to our itinerary. It was raining for the entire journey down through Kent and it was no better once we reached France, but as we got within half an hour of Lille, it stopped, and the weather improved as the day went on and it was warm and sunny for the second half of the game.
It was a shame the two matches weren’t the opposite way round, as it is always nicer to do the furthest away first and work your way back towards home, but it doesn’t always fall like that. As it turned out, I was glad we were doing the game here during the afternoon, as the suburb of Fives is not the nicest area of Lille and parking was at a premium. We parked in the street that runs parallel to the ground, where there was broken glass from car break ins and another car with a smashed window that was taped up. Just for good measure, it looked like a vehicle had been set alight, judging by the burn marks on the road!
Lille O.S. Fives are top of Regional 3 Poule E, eight points clear of the team in second place, with four games left to play. Itancourt Neuville play two levels higher, where they are in fifth place in Regional 1 Poule A.
As is often the case with French football, it was played at a very slow tempo, but somehow, we actually got a match with plenty of goal mouth action. Neuville should have won it far more comfortably than they did, especially after Lille had a man red carded after 38 minutes, with the score 1-2 at the time.
