OGC Nice’s UEFA Europa League hopes are hanging by a thread following Thursday’s 4-1 defeat to Glasgow Rangers. “The European dream isn’t dead. So long as there is still a chance, we will give everything,” said Franck Haise post-match.
But as he points out, “there is no margin for error”. Haise said pre-match that Nice needed three wins from their last four games; they now need to win all of their remaining games in order to qualify in the Europa League. The conditions haven’t been optimal for Le Gym to launch their European campaign with the squad decimated by injuries, as Haise pointed out in the post-match press conference, attended by Get French Football News.
“The first analysis is that I am without 12 players and then 13 from the 15-minute mark (after Youssouf Ndayishimiye’s injury). It is too much for us. I didn’t manage to rotate my team. I had two or three pros on the bench with certain problems,” said the Nice manager, referencing Mohamed-Ali Cho, Evann Guessand, and Tanguy Ndombélé, all of whom featured against Rangers but neither was not at full fitness.
There were five players in the squad, two of whom came on (Yaël Nandjou, Iliesse Salhi), who had not played a single minute of professional football. “The step up is too big,” admitted Haise, who saw his injury crisis deepen further. Cho suffered an injury having come on, whilst Melvin Bard was taken off at half-time with a foot injury. Ahead of Sunday’s match against Olympique Lyonnais, Nice’s options have decreased further.
