Elye Wahi scores hat trick with two penalties as Nice thrash Rennes 5-2

Three penalties in a single match, four goals from one player and a final score of 5-2. That's how Nice dispatched Rennes at the Allianz Riviera, in a Ligue 1 clash that started off evenly matched and ended up as an offensive party for the home side.

Elye Wahi was the headline act of the afternoon: he converted two penalties and scored from open play, and added an assist on top of that. The first came in the 11th minute, when he buried a penalty down the middle of the goal after a foul by Nicolas Lemaître inside the box. Rennes, far from folding, equalized quickly: in the 14th minute, Sebastian Szymanski rose at the back post to head home the 1-1 off a cross from Aboubakar Nagida. The match looked set to go back and forth, but Nice went back in front before halftime: another penalty, this time for a foul by Valentin Rongier on Jonathan Clauss, which Wahi converted in the 34th minute to make it 2-1 at the break.

If the first half had already been eventful, the start of the second was a demolition job. Just after the restart, in the 46th minute, Jonathan Clauss curled a finish into the top corner off an assist from Wahi himself to make it 3-1. Five minutes later, in the 51st, Mohammed Amoura struck with his left foot from the center of the box, set up by Sofiane Diop, for the 4-1. In six minutes the game had essentially been put away.

Rennes still found one more gasp: Boulaye Dia pulled one back from the penalty spot in the 57th minute (4-2), after a foul by Niels Nkounkou on Mousa Al Tamari inside the area. But Nice didn't flinch and closed out the scoring in the 72nd minute, when Wahi completed his hat trick of the afternoon with a finish from the center of the box off a pass from Gauthier Hein, making it a final 5-2.

What the numbers say

The stats point to a match that was closer than the final score suggests. Rennes had more possession and more shots, but Nice was more clinical in both boxes and created more clear-cut chances.

The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots confirms that Nice deserved the win based on the volume of danger created: 3.81 compared to Rennes' 3.01. These are numbers that measure what happened on the field, not a pregame projection, but they do give a sense of how open the contest was at both ends.

Before kickoff, our projection gave Rennes the better chance of winning, with 44% against Nice's 30% and a 26% chance of a draw, with around 3.08 total goals expected between both sides. The result ended up contradicting that outlook entirely: not only did the side given less of a chance come out on top, it did so by a three goal margin and well beyond the projected goal total.

What it means in the standings

In the Ligue 1 table, Rennes came into the match third with 16 points and Nice eighth with 14, separated by just 2 points beforehand. With nine matchdays played by both sides, the table is starting to take shape, and this result hands the three points to a Nice side that showed cutting edge at the right moments, while Rennes will have to come to terms with a rout that wasn't reflected in its possession or shot numbers.

Between yellow cards shown late on (to Charlie Cresswell, Mohamed Abdelmonem, Mahdi Camara and Youssouf Ndayishimiye, among others) and the substitutions both managers, Olivier Pantaloni for Nice and Franck Haise for Rennes, used to try to reshape their teams, the match wrapped up with an Allianz Riviera crowd that saw a bit of everything: penalties, headers, shots into the top corner and a complete finishing performance that tipped the scales clearly in favor of the home side.