Marseille Turn Angers Into a Five-Goal Statement at Stade Raymond Kopa

Marseille left Stade Raymond Kopa with a 5-2 win over Angers, and the scoreline was not a distortion of the match. The visitors generated 2.74 expected goals to Angers' 2.02, took 21 shots to 11, put eight on target to three, and touched the ball in the box 33 times to Angers' 18. Both sides lined up in 4-2-3-1, but only one of them sustained the pressure that shape is supposed to produce.

Lilian Rao-Lisoa put Angers ahead in the 14th minute with a header worth 0.61 xG, converting the game's first clear chance and briefly making the 4-2-3-1 look like a platform for the hosts. It was not. Marseille had already begun stacking possession — 58 percent across the match, 273 passes in the opposition half to Angers' 126 — and the response came through the same route Angers had used.

Himad Abdelli headed Marseille level in the 37th minute from Timothy Weah's assist, a 0.51 xG chance that reflected how easily Marseille were finding space between Angers' lines. Six minutes later, Nouhoum Kamissoko made it 2-1 from a corner, Emerson providing the delivery. The set-piece goal carried only 0.15 xG, but it was the second of three first-half corners for Marseille against Angers' zero, and it turned a one-goal deficit into a lead Marseille never surrendered.

By half-time Marseille led 2-1 with 12 shots to Angers' five and 1.25 xG to 0.90. The pattern was set: Angers could score, but they could not stop Marseille from creating.

Amine Gouiri extended the lead in the 60th minute from a set piece, a right-footed finish worth 0.70 xG — the highest-quality chance of the match. Gouiri finished with 1.02 xG and a goal, the most dangerous single threat on the pitch.

Angers found a route back when Amine El Ouazzani converted a 75th-minute penalty, 0.79 xG, cutting the deficit to 3-2 and briefly restoring the possibility of a comeback. Marseille's response was immediate and ruthless. Amine Harit scored in the 83rd minute from Tochukwu Nnadi's assist, a 0.07 xG chance that owed everything to the space Angers had left while chasing the game. Two minutes later, Igor Paixão made it 5-2 from Weah's second assist of the match, a 0.25 xG finish that completed the scoring.

Weah's two assists bookended a performance that repeatedly unlocked Angers' 4-2-3-1. Marseille's 494 accurate passes at 88 percent, against Angers' 328 at 84 percent, described the control; the 5-2 scoreline described what they did with it. Angers won 40 duels to Marseille's 31 and committed 11 fouls to Marseille's 12, but duels and fouls do not decide matches when the opponent is generating five big chances to two.

Marseille's 2.74 xG split into 1.65 from open play and 0.31 from set pieces, with the remainder from the penalty and other situations. Angers' 2.02 xG was more heavily open-play dependent at 1.20, with just 0.03 from set pieces — a telling gap given that Marseille scored from a corner and a set piece while Angers managed almost nothing from dead balls.

The second half followed the first: Marseille out-shot Angers 9-6, out-touched them in the box 17-9, and out-passed them 256-160 in accuracy terms. Angers' penalty gave them a foothold at 3-2, but Marseille's two late goals — Harit's low-probability strike and Paixão's clincher — punished a home side that had to open up and could not cope with the space that created.

Gouiri's 1.02 xG and Abdelli's 0.55 xG led the Marseille attack, while Kamissoko's 0.15 xG header from a corner showed the set-piece threat that Angers never matched. For Angers, Rao-Lisoa's 0.61 xG header and El Ouazzani's 0.79 xG penalty were the only moments of genuine quality against a Marseille side that created more, finished more, and controlled the match from the 37th minute onward.

Marseille's 5-2 win was built on chance volume, set-piece efficiency, and the ability to answer every Angers goal with one of their own. Angers scored twice and still lost by three because they could not stop Marseille from generating 2.74 xG — and on this evidence, few sides in Ligue 1 will.