Making his first-ever Champions League start for Lille at just 18 years old, Ethan Mbapp\u00e9 could not replicate his brother Kylian\u2019s past success at Borussia Dortmund\u2019s Westfalenstadion, where the PSG star shone eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Lille coach Bruno G\u00e9n\u00e9sio pulled off a surprise by naming Ethan in the starting lineup just an hour before kickoff. The young midfielder replaced Dutch winger Mitchel Bakker, taking on the role of a right winger in the attack.<\/p>\n
G\u00e9n\u00e9sio, 58, explained his decision: \u201cEthan played well in Paris (where we lost 4-1 to PSG on Saturday), and I also wanted speed and penetration in attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe have a lot of issues with our forwards\u2014some are still injured, and others are just coming back from injury. I considered Mat\u00edas Fern\u00e1ndez-Pardo and R\u00e9my Cabella, but we wanted to exploit the depth and space behind Dortmund\u2019s defense. I think Ethan played a very interesting 60 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lille coach is known for his bold tactical experiments in this season\u2019s Champions League campaign. His risk-taking has paid off, with Lille advancing directly to the Round of 16 by finishing seventh in the group stage standings.<\/p>\n
Against Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, he fielded a very young squad that managed an impressive 3-1 victory at the Metropolitano Stadium.<\/p>\n
Similarly, in Bologna, he achieved another strong result by playing 20-year-old Congolese playmaker Ngala\u00efl Mokao, leading Lille to a 2-1 win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Making his first-ever Champions League start for Lille at just 18 years old, Ethan Mbapp\u00e9 could not replicate his brother Kylian\u2019s past success at Borussia Dortmund\u2019s Westfalenstadion, where the PSG star shone eight years ago. Lille coach Bruno G\u00e9n\u00e9sio pulled off a surprise by naming Ethan in the starting lineup just an hour before kickoff. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44120,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44119\/revisions\/44120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}