"Well done, but watch out for their dirty tricks," Rothen patted Julien, happy about the goal while warning him.
Julien nodded.
He was well aware of these aspects of the game.
In professional football, not everyone could truly stick to sporting ethics.
Malicious tackles that ended opponents' careers were all too common in professional football.
Perhaps the most typical example was the 2001 Manchester derby, when United captain Keane, due to his long-standing grudge with Haaland, deliberately stamped on his opponent's knee with his studs during a phase of play where neither had the ball, causing serious injury.
This incident forced Haaland to retire at just thirty due to cruciate ligament damage in his left knee.
Keane was only fined £150,000 and suspended for 5 matches. Later, in his autobiography, Keane admitted it was deliberate retaliation, causing public outcry. Eventually, under Ferguson's rebuke, he modified the relevant content in his autobiography "I'm Not a Villain."
At Lens' home ground, the Bastia players didn't celebrate too long.
Appropriate provocation was fine, but if they really got the home fans worked up, it wouldn't be good for either side—there were plenty of examples of mutual destruction.
With just over ten minutes remaining, Jean Garcia seemed to have given up on attacking, having his Lens players try to hold their half of the pitch.
After seeing Julien's sequence of dribbles, he kept shaking his head—this simply wasn't the kind of striker a Ligue 2 team should have.
Losing to the league leaders was acceptable.
Currently, Lens found it difficult to either get promoted or relegated.
The Lens players hadn't initially wanted to give up like this—they felt they had pent-up anger that needed venting. Whether from the scoreline or the physical battles on the pitch, they'd taken a beating.
Especially Ben Saada.
The chaos in this match had started because of him, but he was also the one suffering most.
He was being targeted by Bastia players repeatedly.
Every time he touched the ball and tried to advance, the opposition would add a little extra to their challenges.
The key was that these actions were neither too big nor too small—right in the referee's zone of uncertainty.
In the 83rd minute, Jean Garcia substituted Ben Saada to let him cool down.
After his contract with Nice expired, Lens had signed him as a free agent intending to build around him as a key player, giving him the number 7 shirt.
Unfortunately, he couldn't live up to expectations.
This season, despite starting twenty league matches, he had zero goals and zero assists.
His three years at Nice had been wasted years.
He had even been called up to the French U17 team and won the U17 World Cup with them—otherwise Nice wouldn't have been interested.
But he had stagnated.
As he left the pitch, watching Julien being treated like a star by his Bastia teammates, he felt an indescribable frustration—a breath seem to have been caught in his chest that he couldn't release.
Comparing himself to others was truly soul-crushing. Right now, he could only be described with one word: miserable!
With both sides intentionally slowing the pace, the match only became chaotic during that earlier period of confusion.
After Julien's goal, the situation stabilized.
This continued until the referee blew the final whistle.
Tweet!
One long blast.
Lens 0-2 Bastia.
Hadzibegic hugged his assistant coaches and players in celebration—they continued to lead the table.
Eleven matches remained. They maintained control of their championship destiny.
After the match, Hadzibegic was stern-faced during his interview. He didn't answer other questions but focused on the malicious foul against Julien.
"I naturally trust the referee's decisions, and I'm confident his eyesight prescription is adequate—after all, he precisely spotted our 3-centimeter offside while missing someone using lumberjack techniques on a seventeen-year-old player!
Yellow card?
No, that was absolutely a red card offense.
Of course, perhaps the referee had his own grounds for the decision, but you can't come out and say it was a refereeing error only after a player's season is over."
"My blood pressure is still spiking! That wasn't football—that was a lumberjack's work! Look at the slow-motion replay—the studs made contact with his shin and ankle first, not the ball! Our medical team will conduct a comprehensive examination of Julien."
Meanwhile, Jean Garcia ignored the foul incident, saying, "That chaos was the result of players acting irrationally. We should focus on football."
"As for the match? We lost—there's nothing to say. I've had many defeats in my life, but they're all in the past and no longer matter. I only focus on our next opponent and how we can win."
In the dressing room, while showering, Julien counted his victory points: 15 points.
Current total: 25 points.
Indeed, as his ability gradually improved, point acquisition in the second division was becoming quite limited.
After the match ended, despite the team's victory, many people in Bastia continued to criticize Ben Saada. On social media, they harassed him so much that he deactivated his accounts.
As a product of Bastia's youth system, he was stripped of his Bastia citizenship by the Bastia fans.
Someone even threatened him: "If you dare return to Bastia, I'll make you experience the same flying tackle that Julien felt."
The fans rallied around Julien.
During the flight home, his teammates also discussed how he could protect himself.
Julien himself wasn't particularly bothered, as malicious fouls were part of football.
As long as they didn't happen to him, that is.
Bastia's next match was in three days, on the 17th.
The players didn't have much time to rest.
After careful consideration, Hadzibegic decided to rotate heavily for this match.
Their opponents were fellow promoted side Amiens.
As a historically significant French club, Amiens had little to boast about beyond their long history.
This team's proudest achievement was probably in April 2001.
Under then-coach Troussier, Amiens, as a French third-division team, conceded only 2 goals in 7 French Cup matches, with particularly outstanding defensive performances.
In the French Cup semi-final, they defeated Ligue 1 side Troyes 4-2 on penalties, reaching their first-ever French Cup final.
Although they ultimately lost 0-1 to Strasbourg in the final, this achievement had already created amateur football legend.
Unfortunately, that was ancient history.
This season, after promotion to Ligue 2, Amiens had managed only 4 wins, 12 draws, and 11 losses in 27 matches, with 24 points placing them at the bottom of the table.
Fellow promoted side with Bastia— bookends of the league.
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