RC Lens tore up the script on opening night in the UEFA Champions League, snatching a 3-2 win at Slavia Prague with a stoppage-time comeback that will live long in club folklore.
For 89 minutes at the Fortuna Arena, it looked like a humiliation in the making. Facing ten men after Konecny’s red card, Dino Toppmoller’s side still trailed 2-1 when Sturm grabbed his second of the evening. Lens, brittle in recent weeks at home, suddenly stared at a damaging defeat on their European return.
Then the game flipped.
A team short on confidence found something deeper: defiance, anger, pride. Slavia, who had done so much right, froze just as Lens threw everything forward.
The equaliser came from the most unlikely of sources and in the most unlikely of ways. Florian Thauvin, not exactly known for his aerial dominance, rose in the 91st minute to meet a superb cross from 16-year-old Mezian Mesloub and buried his header. A teenager delivering, a World Cup winner finishing. The away end exploded.
Thauvin laughed about it afterwards on Canal+, but in the moment it felt like a release of weeks of frustration. He framed it not as a technical feat, but as the product of a team refusing to die, talking about the mindset that allows you to score “with your foot, your head, your backside” when you empty the tank.
Slavia staggered. Lens didn’t stop.
Two minutes later, the turnaround was complete. Ruben Aguilar, surging forward, struck a brilliant winner to make it 3-2 and turn what had looked like a collapse into a famous victory. In the space of three breathless minutes, a crisis night became a statement night.
It was Lens’s first away win in the Champions League since 1998, a statistic that underlined just how significant this result is for the club. This is not a side used to strolling through Europe’s elite grounds. They have had to claw their way back to this level, and on this evidence, they intend to stay.
The bench played its part. Toppmoller’s second-half changes changed the game’s temperature. Abdallah Sima, one of the substitutes, found the net. Mesloub, thrown into a high-pressure Champions League tie at just 16, delivered the cross of the night for Thauvin’s equaliser. Those interventions shifted the momentum and, ultimately, the result.
Thauvin, who has ridden his own share of highs and lows, framed the night as a psychological turning point. He spoke of “mental strength,” of a group emerging from a difficult domestic period and choosing to fight instead of fold. “We fought like lions, we never gave up, and we were rewarded,” he said, summing up the raw emotion of a dressing room that had been under scrutiny.
For a team battered by recent Ligue 1 form, this was more than three points. It was a lifeline. A reminder of who they can be when they lean into the chaos instead of fearing it.
Lens now carry that surge of belief back into France, where Le Mans FC await on Sunday in Ligue 1. The Blood and Gold have been searching for a spark to ignite their season.
In Prague, under the floodlights and on the brink of disaster, they may just have found it.
