It was Mission Impossible. Le Gym believed they could do it, but couldn't pull it off. Ambitious from the outset, Nice were punished 1-0 by a clinical Lokomotiv Moscow. The 2017/18 Europa League campaign ends in the round of 32.

TWO CROSSBARS FOR MARIO

Nice did it all, except the most important part: put the ball in the back of the net. Despite a frozen pitch and a broken thermostat (-15° Celsius!), Les Aiglons went for it from the opening whistle, just like they said they would, looking to make up for their 3-2 home loss in the first leg. Super Mario was quickly to the fore: he sent an absolute rocket crashing off the crossbar from 25m out (11'), and then hit the same bar with a wonderful free-kick from the edge of the area (19’).

In their familiar 4-3-3, with Perraud on the left side of the defence, the men from the Côte d'Azur were continued to attack, setting the tempo high and pushing Lokomotiv back towards their own goal. But they just couldn't score (Lees-Melou was quick enough to benefit from Burner's cross (25’), Cyprien (42') and Balotelli (45’) shot over) and then Nice conceded the opening goal from their hosts' first shot on target. It symbolised what is going wrong at the moment.

Once a train finally gets up to speed, it is very hard to stop! Lokomotiv ended the first half in front. How? With the ball bouncing around in the area, Denisov pounced and drove the ball beyond Benitez (1-0, 30’). Before then, Anton Miranchuk fired wide, one-on-one, but under pressure, from Nice's Argentine 'keeper (27’).

NO ROOM THROUGH THE MIDDLE, GUILHERME SOLID

Encouraged by a passionate home crowd and comforted by the scenario of the two legs, and the aggregate score, the home side contented themselves to sit deep and look to hit on the counterattack when the opportunities arose. Ari saw his header deflected wide by Dante (46’), Aleksei Miranchuk was denied by Benitez (48’). At the other end, Saint-Maximin, Balotelli and Plea were all denied by Guilherme before the hour mark. 

Les Aiglons threw everything into the battle, playing high up the pitch and Benitez kept his side's faint hopes alive with a great save from Aleksei Miranchuk (65'), before the Russian's brother hit the post (67'), but by then, it was already too late...

The Russian side's disciplined 4-4-1-1, were happy to find themselves one-on-one on the wings, but were compact and numerous in the middle, where they always had an extra man. And whenever they could, they attacked with three or four on the counter and always looked dangerous. Despite several chances at both ends of the park, there was no further change to the scoring. 

In polar conditions, at the edge of the continent, OGC Nice's European campaign came to an end.

Despite the extremely difficult conditions, these matches with that continental flavour are still so special…

Now the team must the do the job in the league to return after the summer... And that is a huge challenge in itself!

C.D. in Moscow

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