Slavia Prague led twice with ten men, and Lens scored twice in stoppage time to take it

Slavia Prague spent more than forty minutes a man down, led the match twice, and lost it in the last three minutes. Lens won 3-2 at the Fortuna Arena on Thursday night in a game that had no business finishing the way it did.

The Champions League league phase opened this week with Bayern putting five past Bodo/Glimt and Manchester United four past Sabah. This was the one worth staying up for.

A substitute, four minutes, a red card

Mikulas Konecny had been on the pitch a matter of minutes when he brought down Abdallah Sima as the Lens forward ran at goal. Greek referee Vasilios Fotias waved it away. VAR did not, and Konecny was sent off in the 49th minute, four minutes into a half he had only just been sent on for.

Slavia had every reason to fold at that point. They did the opposite. Danijel Sturm put them ahead two minutes later and they defended the lead for twenty-two minutes against a full-strength Lens side.

Sima did it to his old club

Sima was the one who broke it, and Slavia sold him. He left Prague for Brighton in August 2021, then spent four years there without a single senior appearance, on loan at Stoke, Angers, Rangers and Brest in turn. Lens bought him outright last August for a reported 4.5 million euros. He turned in a deflected effort in the 73rd minute to make it 1-1, five years after Slavia cashed him in.

Two minutes from time Sturm scored again. Slavia’s second of the night, his second of the night, and with the visitors chasing the game and the home crowd counting down, that should have been it. Ten men, two goals, a win over a Ligue 1 side in the opening round.

Ninety plus one, ninety plus three

Florian Thauvin equalised with a header in the first minute of stoppage time. Ruben Aguilar won it in the third. Slavia went from 2-1 up with two minutes to play to beaten, inside 120 seconds of added time, while a man short the whole way.

Lens have not been here often. This is only their fourth Champions League campaign, and their last one, in 2023-24, was their first since 2002-03. They finished third in that group behind Arsenal and PSV, which under the old format meant the Europa League rather than the last 16. Two seasons later they are back, and they have three points from a night they were losing with three minutes left.

Slavia have been here before, and it keeps going like this

For Slavia this is a fourth Champions League campaign too, and the recent history is not kind. They went out at the group stage in 2007-08 and again in 2019-20, and last season they finished 34th in the 36-team league phase.

The Czech champions will look at this one for a while. A red card that came from a VAR review their referee had already decided against, forty minutes of holding on, a former player scoring the equaliser, and then two goals in the time that was added on. They deserved something from it. They got nothing.

Both sides are back in action before that — Slavia away to Sabah and Lens at home to Sporting on 13 October — ahead of Slavia’s third league-phase match, in Istanbul against Fenerbahce on 20 October, where they will find a club in the middle of its own crisis.

Catch up on the rest of the European nights