Coupe de France: AS Monaco eliminated by Rouen in dramatic fashion
AS Monaco’s Coupe de France journey ended following their frustrating penalty shootout loss to Rouen in a match where they took the lead in the first half through Folarin Balogun.
The Match
Picking a strong team for this clash that was littered with ASM’s heavy hitters, including an elite front three consisting of Aleksandr Golovin, Folarin Balogun and Takumi Minamimo, Adi Hutter certainly wouldn’t have expected the match to play out the way it did.
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The Match
Starting the match well against their third tier opposition in front of President Dmitry Rybolovlev, Les Monegasques momentarily thought they’d raced to an early lead through Minamino only for his goal to be chalked off for offside.
Balogun then came close shortly after, as the early signs were positive for the visitors, who were dominating and comfortably controlling their foes.
Around the 20 minute mark, the home team began to find their groove by conjuring some decent openings to nearly shoot ahead. Thankfully Radoslaw Majecki and Mohammed Salisu were on hand to chime in with some key interventions to deny the plucky underdogs.
Monaco then took their chance to take the lead when Balogun converted a penalty that he won beyond the half-hour mark.
ASM weren’t able to hold on to their advantage for long, though, for Clement Bassin levelled the ledger for Rouen just prior to the break.
Coming out for the second stanza, Golovin quickly kicked things off with a tidy individual effort before Balogun’s curler was narrowly off target.
With quality chances only arriving sporadically thereafter, Balogun and Golovin notably kept probing to propel their team to victory. But the dynamic duo or their colleagues just couldn’t find the back of the net against a determined Rouen, as the match went to penalties.
Enter the dreaded shootout, and even though both sides slotted home their first three, misses from Balogun and Maghnes Akliouche ultimately saw Rouen prevail to send Hutter’s men crashing out.
Hutter’s Debrief
“It is a very big feeling of disappointment which dominates this evening. I obviously want to congratulate Rouen for their performance. Everyone is very sad to leave this Coupe de France. We wanted to go to the end of this competition, until the final. Our performance was not good enough, not sufficient,” lamented the Austrian tactician.
“It was too easy for Rouen to defend against us, they were very well organised. We haven’t found the right solutions to answer this. Sometimes we have difficulties against teams who play in a low block, but that’s no excuse. And then on penalties, it doesn’t matter if it’s a third division team facing you, it doesn’t matter, because it’s a special situation. I think we should have done more during the 90 minutes. I admit that it is difficult to find the right words this evening. Our disappointment is immense.”
Key Stats
By the numbers, the fact ASM held the ascendancy in terms of expected goals (2.20 to 0.95), total shots (13 to 10), shots inside the box (9 to 6), possession (67% to 33%), passes in the opposition half (337 to 95) and big chances created (4 to 2) illustrated it just wasn’t their night.
Derby Awaits
ASM will need to rapidly forget about this setback and turn their full attention to the massive upcoming Cote d’Azur derby against OGC Nice, where a win is a must to keep their Champions League qualification hopes alive and to restore some positivity.
“It will be another match, but we will have to make some changes in players, and perhaps in the system as well. But for me the problem is not the pattern tonight, but the lack of solutions. We will have to analyse all of this. We are once again very disappointed, but we must get our heads up very quickly against Nice,” said Hutter.