Marseille’s French forward Andre-Pierre Gignac (left) controls the ball past Evian’s Ghanaian defender Jonathan Mensah during the French L1 math at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille yesterday. (AFP)
French international Andre-Pierre Gignac inspired Olympique Marseille to their second straight win, a 2-0 defeat of Evian which lifted Elie Baup’s side into a tie with Lyon at the top of Ligue 1 on yesterday.
Gignac put last season’s runners-up on track after just 16 minutes when he turned his defender inside out before firing home a low left foot shot inside the bottom corner at the Velodrome. Evian limited the damage to a 1-0 deficit at half-time but almost gave away a penalty on 62 minutes when a clear foul by Olivier Sorin on Ghana forward Andre Ayew went unpunished by the referee.
The home side then made the points safe with 23 minutes remaining after international winger Mathieu Valbuena saw his right foot volley parried into the path of Dimitri Payet who shook off his marker before smashing home.
Marseille, who won their opening match with a 3-1 victory over Guingamp last weekend, move level on points with Lyon who have also taken maximum points from their opening two matches. Lyon lead on goal difference. Payet took his goal tally to three for the season and is the early front runner at the top of the scoring charts along with Lyon’s 22-year-old youngster Alexandre Lacazette.
Champions Paris Saint-Germain host Ajaccio today and Monaco have their home opener against Montpellier.
Lyon have a perfect six points from two games after their opening 4-0 win over Nice last weekend. They will go into Tuesday’s Champions League play-off first-leg tie against Spain’s Real Sociedad buoyed by Friday’s performance which saw them come back from a goal down after just four minutes.
“We have won at Sochaux where it is never easy to dominate,” said Lyon coach Remi Garde. “We have bad times here in the last two seasons and Sochaux caused us lots of problems, especially in the air. But we recovered well and deserved our victory. We have scored seven goals in two games, so attacking-wise all is going well.”
Ryad Boudebouz scored from the penalty spot for hosts Sochaux in the fourth minute after Milan Bisevac was punished for a foul on Cedric Bakambu.
But Lyon were 2-1 up at the break after Yassine Benzia levelled in the 35th minute and Alexandre Lacazette hit the target two minutes from the interval.