Slavia Prague were down to ten men from the forty-ninth minute. They were 1-0 down with seventeen minutes left. They were level twice. And they still lost. Lens scored in the ninety-first minute and again in the ninety-third to win 3-2 in one of the more brutal finishes of the Champions League's opening round.
Mikulas Konecny was sent off four minutes into the second half. Danijel Sturm equalised on 51 and again on 88. Abdallah Sima put Lens ahead on 73, Florian Thauvin levelled the sums again at 90+1, and Ruben Aguilar scored the winner at 90+3.
Slavia refused to sit back
The obvious response to a red card at 0-0 is to defend the point. Slavia did not do that. Sturm scored within two minutes of going a man down, and for long stretches the Czech side looked more likely to win it than the visitors. They created from wide areas, pressed in short bursts to conserve energy, and got the crowd behind them.
Sturm's second, two minutes from time, should have been the story of the night. A ten-man side coming from behind twice in a Champions League match is the kind of thing that gets replayed for years. Instead it lasted three minutes.
Lens found a way when they were running out of ideas
For an hour Lens looked like a team who had prepared for eleven opponents and did not know what to do with ten. They dominated possession without doing much with it. Sima's goal on 73 came from one of the few clean moves they put together in open play.
What changed at the end was simply that they kept throwing bodies forward. Thauvin's equaliser arrived in the first minute of added time and Aguilar's winner two minutes later, both from the kind of scrambled situations that happen when a tired defence is defending its box with everyone in it. Lens will not care how it looked.
Three points that could matter in January
In the 36-team league phase, the margin between finishing eighth and finishing twenty-fifth is often two results. Lens have taken three points from a fixture that, at 2-2 in the ninetieth minute, was worth one. Slavia have nothing from a match they played most of with ten men and nearly won.
Jindrich Trpisovsky will find that harder to accept than a defeat by three or four. His side did almost everything right and got punished for the last ninety seconds.
Match facts: Slavia Prague 2-3 Lens, UEFA Champions League league phase matchday one, Thursday 10 September 2026. Scorers: Sturm 51 and 88 (Slavia), Sima 73, Thauvin 90+1, Aguilar 90+3 (Lens). Red card: Mikulas Konecny (Slavia) 49.
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