Sole Brandão goal wins League Cup for Marseille

Olympique de Marseille ended their 12-match sequence without a victory and in doing so became the first club to win the French League Cup in three successive seasons after triumphing in extra time against Olympique Lyonnais.

Thirteen points adrift of their opponents in Ligue 1, Marseille required victory to assure themselves of UEFA Europa League football next season. They mustered the decisive strike after 104 minutes of stalemate, when Brandão, the forward whose late goal last month took Didier Deschamps' side through to the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals at the expense of FC Internazionale Milano, again came off the bench to score.

With Dejan Lovren's late dismissal for a second yellow card went the 2001 winners' faint hopes of reclaiming the trophy. Marseille join Paris Saint-Germain FC as the most successful side in the history of the competition reinstated for professional clubs in the 1994/95 season.

Lyon can take comfort in the fact that they will be back at Stade de France on 28 April for the French Cup final, when they will face amateur outfit US Quevilly. Lying fourth in Ligue 1, three points behind LOSC Lille Métropole, Les Gones are also still very much in the UEFA Champions League reckoning.