Monaco secured back-to-back wins to start their Ligue 1 campaign on Saturday, outclassing Lyon 2-0 at the Groupama Stadium.<\/p>\n
Teenager Eliesse Ben Seghir capped a fine performance with the opener midway through the second half, before Lamine Camara struck to seal the three points for the away side.<\/span><\/p>\n Lyon have endured another difficult start to their league campaign. After a 3-0 defeat at Rennes last weekend, they have now conceded five goals in their opening two matches, having been the form team in Ligue 1 in 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s incredible; we\u2019d never won here,\u201d said Ben Seghir. \u201cWe won by two goals. It\u2019s the third match where we\u2019ve kept a clean sheet (including a friendly against Barcelona); that shows the way we play.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The hosts\u2019 troubles began early when forward Ernest Nuamah appeared to pull a muscle and was replaced by new signing Georges Mikautadze.<\/span><\/p>\n The best chance of the first half fell to Monaco\u2019s Japanese attacker, Takumi Minamino, on the half-hour mark. The former Liverpool player wriggled free inside the box with a deft touch, but Lucas Perri managed to narrow the angle and tipped the ball onto the far post.<\/span><\/p>\n Lyon looked to have come close to grabbing an unlikely lead right on the stroke of half-time, but Philipp Koehn shot off his line quickly to nullify the danger. A goal-kick was signalled as Said Benrahma had marginally overrun the ball in the build-up.<\/span><\/p>\n After the break, Monaco continued to dominate with the tricky Ben Seghir persistently troubling the Lyon defence.<\/span><\/p>\n The Moroccan found Minamino in a central position, who then laid the ball off to Breel Embolo. The forward\u2019s powerful drive from just outside the box flew over the crossbar.<\/span><\/p>\n Embolo missed another chance on 63 minutes when Maghnes Akliouche lofted a cross into the box. He attempted an overhead kick inside a crowded area, which blazed over the goal.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Monaco\u2019s pressure soon told, and it was Ben Seghir and Akliouche who provided the breakthrough on 65 minutes. The 19-year-old zipped a pass to Akliouche, who then returned the favour before Ben Seghir shifted the ball onto his right foot in tight space and threaded a precise finish into the far corner.<\/span><\/p>\n Camara then sealed the match in the 80th minute, finishing emphatically from Kassoum Ouattara\u2019s cross at the back post.<\/span><\/p>\n Lyon appeared fatigued, and a series of errors gifted Akliouche a glorious chance with seven minutes remaining, but he ballooned his effort high and wide with only Perri to beat.<\/span><\/p>\n A dampener was put on Monaco\u2019s day when Camara received a second yellow card for a late challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n Later on Saturday, Lille will host newly-promoted Angers, and Saint-Etienne\u2019s Le Chaudron stadium will see the return of top-flight football after two years with the visit of Le Havre.<\/span><\/p>\n AFP.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monaco secured back-to-back wins to start their Ligue 1 campaign on Saturday, outclassing Lyon 2-0 at the Groupama Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19286,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19284\/revisions\/19286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}