Strasbourg comes from behind to sink Lens as Yassine scores twice at the Meinau

Lens went ahead from the penalty spot, controlled long stretches of the game and even put the ball in the net a second time, yet still left the Stade de la Meinau empty handed. Strasbourg turned the match around in the second half and claimed a 2-1 win, with Gessime Yassine as the outright star of the night, scoring both of the home side's goals.

The script looked to be written for Lens. In the 34th minute Jeyland Mitchell brought down Abdallah Sima inside the box and was booked for the foul, and three minutes later Florian Thauvin made no mistake from the spot to put Lens up 0-1 in the 37th minute. Strasbourg had looked dangerous early on, with Giovanni Reyna and Pape Diop both testing the Lens defense, but went into the break trailing on the scoreboard.

The response came almost as soon as play resumed. In the 47th minute, moments after the restart, Yassine leveled the score with a finish from inside the box after being set up by Sebastian Nanasi. The game opened up even further in the 55th minute, when Jacobo Ortega thought he had put Strasbourg ahead, but VAR chalked off the goal and the score stayed at 1-1.

The decisive moment took a while to arrive, but it was emphatic: in the 84th minute, on a counterattack, Nanasi again set up Yassine, who finished from the middle of the box to make it a final 2-1. Lens pushed for an equalizer until the end, with Matthieu Udol crashing a header off the post in the 88th minute and several more attempts in stoppage time, which ran to seven minutes, but the equalizer never came.

An evenly matched game by the numbers

The stats reflect just how tight the contest was. Lens had more shots and more corners, but Strasbourg was not far behind in possession or in clear-cut chances.

The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots actually favors Lens, at 3.15 compared to Strasbourg's 2.06, a figure that confirms the visitors created more danger overall, even though they came away with nothing to show for it.

That result also runs counter to what the pre-match numbers suggested. Lens had been given a 43% chance of winning, against 31% for Strasbourg and 26% for a draw, with expected goals of 1.75 for the visitors and 1.46 for the hosts. The outcome was the exact opposite of the favorite, with the home side taking all three points despite generating less xG over the course of the match.

What the result means

With this win, Strasbourg moves to 3 points in Ligue 1, the same total as Lens, who now have a win and a loss to their name. Both clubs sit in a table with still very few games played, so the standings do not say much just yet. What is clear is that Yassine took over the match in the minutes that mattered, and that Lens leaves with the feeling of having created more than the final score ended up showing.