Lens striker Florian Thauvin opened the scoring from the penalty spot after nine minutes. And the 33-year-old France international laid on the pass for Allan\u00a0Saint-Maxim to double the host’s advantage 10 minutes later.<\/p>\n
Santiago\u00a0Hidalgo halved the deficit mid way through the first-half but\u00a0Matthieu Udol restored the two-goal lead just before half-time. Adrien Thomasson added the gloss in the 75th minute.<\/p>\n
On 22 May at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, Lens will play the winners of Wednesday night’s second semi-final between Nice and Strasbourg.<\/p>\n
Possible league and cup double<\/p>\n
Lens, with 62 points after 29 games, are also in a race for the 2026 Ligue 1 title<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Wednesday night, Ligue 1 pacesetters Paris Saint-Germain<\/a> have a chance to extend their lead to four points over second-placed Lens.<\/p>\n PSG entertain relegation-threatened Nantes at the Parc des Princes in Paris.<\/p>\n “The struggling sides are in last chance saloon when it comes to staying in Ligue 1,” said PSG boss Luis Enrique on the eve of the clash.<\/p>\n “Playing against\u00a0them is really hard.<\/a>\u00a0If any fan is expecting to come to the Parc des Princes just to drink Coca-Cola and have something to eat, forget it! If you’re expecting an easy game, forget it!.”<\/p>\n Lens boss urges squad to relish chase for first Coupe de France<\/a><\/p>\n Following Wednesday night’s match, PSG, who are chasing a fifth consecutive top flight crown and a record-extending 14th overall, will have five games left including what could be a title decider at Lens on 13 May.<\/p>\n The match should have been played on 11 April but the Ligue de Football Professionnel<\/a>, which runs Ligue 1, dismissed Lens’ objections <\/a>and allowed PSG to postpone the fixture as part of their preparations for the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool<\/a>.<\/p>\n PSG conclude their Ligue 1 campaign on 16 May at Paris FC while Lens play the same day at Lyon who are fighting to finish in the four places in Ligue 1 which lead to a berth in the league stages of the 2026\/2027 Champions League.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lens striker Florian Thauvin opened the scoring from the penalty spot after nine minutes. And the 33-year-old France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6564,6563,5,3282,631,2611,6566,964,3892,333,6565,248,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-8112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-adrien-thomasson","9":"tag-florian-thauvin","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-lens","12":"tag-lyon","13":"tag-matthieu-udol","14":"tag-nantes","15":"tag-parc-des-princes","16":"tag-paris-fc","17":"tag-paris-saint-germain","18":"tag-santiago-hidalgo","19":"tag-stade-de-france","20":"tag-strasbourg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}