Balmont and Lille go big-game hunting

Florent Balmont and his LOSC Lille Métropole team-mates were able to savour a "great victory" as a memorable evening in northern France ended with a place in the UEFA Europa League round of 32 thanks to a 3-1 defeat of SK Slavia Praha.

Entertaining encounter
Rudi Garcia's team went into the match knowing that victory would assure them of at least the runners-up spot in Group B and an effervescent first-half display was rewarded by goals from the prolific Yohan Cabaye and Gervinho. The party atmosphere provided by that cushion was punctured somewhat when Stanislav Vlček marked his 50th European appearance in appropriate fashion by reducing the deficit early in the second period and Lille were left sweating until Ludovic Obraniak curled in a delightful clinching third in the closing stages leaving Balmont to look back with relief.

Danger averted
"It's a great victory for us against a good team," the midfielder told uefa.com. "Even though they were already out, Slavia came here to play. At 2-1, we were in a dangerous situation and it took the third goal to finish the game off. We're happy because we've done well in this group stage; we knew Genoa and Valencia would be tough opponents, but we've managed to eliminate Genoa and based on our two games against them, we deserved to finish in second place. We've been talking about the draw in the dressing room, and we'd all like to play a big club next – that would be great."

'Backs to the wall'
The Lille squad all made mention of their impressive form in December so far, with the Slavia success their fourth consecutive win in all competitions, three straight Ligue 1 victories in the month – four in total – propelling Les Dogues up to third in the standings after a tough spell. "I haven't forgotten that a month ago we had our backs to the wall," centre-back Adil Rami admitted. "Things change, but we can't forget that period. Our aim has to be to stay as high as we can in the championship and then continue this great adventure in the Europa League. We're going well now but it can change very quickly. We must make sure we keep doing the same things."

Ragued regrets
Slavia's former Paris Saint-German FC midfielder Hocine Ragued was left ruing costly failures at both ends of the pitch on his return to France, telling uefa.com: "We let in two goals that we could have avoided, then pulled it back to 2-1 only to come up against a great goalkeeper. Lille deserve to get through, they're a good team, especially going forward. They have forwards who can make the difference at any moment, and that's always useful. Apart from our home game against Lille, we've done well in this competition; we played well against Genoa and Valencia, and we're only lacking experience. Little details have cost us, but we have a young team and we hope to be back next year."