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Lille Entertains, but Then Spoils the Ending on Astini News

Lille may be the kings of free-flowing French football, but on Wednesday night in their opening bow in this year's Champions League they learned a valuable lesson: attack isn't always the best form of defense.

Especially when your defense is found wanting.

Lille, the reigning Ligue 1 champion that swept all before it to win its first French title since 1954, opened its account with a 2-2 tie at the Stade Metropole against a CSKA Moscow side bereft of ideas and short on talent. For 80 minutes CSKA were distinctly second best. And yet the hosts conceded two late goals as Seydou Doumbia made the most of worrying defensive frailties to earn CSKA a point. It was a robbery so painful that had the local Gendarmes been called, no one of a Russian persuasion could have mustered a single complaint.

What had propelled Lille so majestically to Europe's top competition had cost them dearly. As Manager Rudi Garcia looked on from the stands, serving a one game touchline ban, his energetic and entertaining side faltered. Garcia's style, nurtured by his father and unleashed managerially, first upon Dijon and then Le Mans — teams he transformed — is one of attack, of a flowing 4-3-3 system that allows players to play. That seems such an odd statement and yet managers, especially in the somewhat repressed French premier division, rarely break from the mundane. The death-by-passing style of Barcelona and to a lesser extent, Arsenal, would be treated with a "je ne comprends pas" in much of Ligue 1. Not though by Garcia, and that's what has made his team such a breath of fresh air.

It is an approach that also served him well as a player, most notably with Lille and fellow northerners Caen and, since 2008, as manager of Les Dogues. His mantra is that talent wins; he embraces creativity and allows it to breathe. The Brazilian Michel Bastos flourished under his stewardship and Garcia has turned the Belgian prodigy Eden Hazard into arguably the best young attacking force in European soccer. It was no surprise either that Garcia felt he could find a home for the fallen star Joe Cole in the final hours of the European transfer window. Cole, who began to lose his way long before he joined Liverpool last summer, should be reinvigorated under the watchful eye of the 47-year-old Garcia.

On Wednesday, Lille's game followed a similar pattern to much of its 2010-11 league campaign: for long periods it  dominated. Florent Balmont ran the game from midfield, ably assisted by Ludovic Obraniak, Benoit Pedretti and Hazard, who drifted around the field making it difficult for defenders to pick him up, often popping up in midfield the way Wayne Rooney has done at Manchester United to such acclaim. However, unlike the Lille of the past 12 months there was a very different final scene. The key to Lille's success, beyond all the goals, of which there were many — 68 — was a defense that was breached just 36 times in 38 games (only Rennes, by one, conceded fewer goals). Led by the talented center backs Adil Rami and Aurelien Chedjou, a Cameroon international, and protected by midfielder Yohan Cabaye, Lille were difficult to break down. In only six games did they concede more than one goal, and in 11 they allowed none at all.

But Rami left for Valencia at the start of the summer, having signed a precontract agreement with the Spaniards in January; Cabaye surprised many by joining Newcastle United; and Chedjou sustained a thigh injury last weekend in a win over Saint Etienne. (He was replaced against CSKA by the unconvincing David Rozehnal.) "Do Not Pass Go" became "Open All Hours" for a back four put under late pressure by a Russian side that saw a chink become a crack and a crack become a chasm as it chased a game it had no right to be in.

Still, Lille could have won had Cole made more of the chance that fell to him in injury time after Doumbia's rescue act. Profligacy in front of goal hurt the French champions throughout the 90 minutes, but more worrying for Garcia will be the capitulation at the back. Group B is one of the competition's more difficult brackets, as Trabzonspor proved by beating Inter Milan at the San Siro.

Next up for Lille is a trip to Turkey and the Huseyin Avni Aker Stadium at the end of September — no easy task. The return match with CSKA in the freezing temperatures of a late November evening, sandwiched between two games with Inter will be no walk in the proverbial park, or c'est pas une ballade dans le parc.

Chedjou should have returned to the fold by then, and his partnership with Marko Basa should have had time to bed in a little more. Whether Garcia will be able to curb his own attacking tendencies is not clear. In the postmatch news conference on Wednesday night he told reporters that as long as "we play our game, everything is going our way." Whether his way is the right way in this years Champions League remains to be seen, but if Lille concede seemingly winning positions too often it will be a disappointing early exit for a team whose attacking flair deserves to grace the latter stages of the competition.

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