RSS
|
Lyon have won the Peace Cup at the third time of asking after a 1-0 victory over Bolton in Seoul. The French champions dominated the game from start to finish and were rewarded when Kim Kallstrom scored the only goal of the game inside the final five minutes. Bolton started the brighter, with Kevin Nolan forcing Lyon goalkeeper Gregory Coupet into a couple of early saves. However, Lyon soon took control and almost found themselves infront inside the opening ten minutes, when Abdel Kader Keita's header hit the post with Jaaskelainen stranded in the Bolton goal. Jaaskelainen made a string of fine saves, superbly stopping a long-range piledriver from Nadir Belhadj and denying Sidney Govou when clean through on goal. The Finnish international was called into action again when Karim Benzema pounced on a mistake from Abdoulaye Meite but his shot was parried by the Bolton 'keeper. Bolton thought they had taken the lead on 34 minutes, when Nicolas Anelka headed in from close range, however, the goal was ruled out for offside, leaving the game goalless. Lyon should have taken the lead just before the break, when Keita did well to get behind the Bolton defenders, only for his pul-back to be headed wide by Benzema. Despite Lyon's first half dominance, Bolton came out the stronger after the break and Anelka tried a shot from long-range, which forced a comfortable save from Coupet diving to his right. The first goal of the game almost arrived on 70 minutes, when Jaaskelainen made a one-on-one save from Hatem Ben Arfa, before quickly recovering to deny Milan Baros from scoring on the rebound. But the game was finally won in the 86th minute. Arfa set mission on a long run behind the Bolton defence, beating challenges from Abdoulaye Meite and James Sinclair, before cutting back and allowing Kim Kallstrom to have a shot which went underneath the body of Jaaskelainen. Even with his Man of the Match performance, the Bolton goalkeeper would be unhappy with his error which gave the six times French champions the honour of being Peace Cup champions. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
