RC Lens Stuns Slavia Prague with Dramatic 3-2 Comeback
Ruben Aguilar crashed a shot in off the post in stoppage time as RC Lens ripped up the script and stole a staggering 3-2 UEFA Champions League win over Slavia Prague at the Fortuna Arena – their first away victory in the competition since 1998.
For long stretches, it looked like a night that would haunt them.
Dino Toppmöller’s side trailed 2-1 in the 89th minute, reduced to watching Slavia, down to ten men, edge towards a win when Sturm fired the hosts back in front. The clock bled into the final seconds. The noise rose. Lens stared at a brutal defeat.
Then the game turned on its head.
Florian Thauvin dragged Lens level in the 91st minute, pouncing when it mattered most to haul his team off the canvas. The away end erupted, but there was barely time to catch breath.
Two minutes later, Aguilar stepped forward and settled it with a finish worthy of the chaos that came before. A brilliant strike, arrowed inside the post, completed a comeback that felt almost unreal in its timing and cruelty to Slavia.
When it was over, Aguilar could scarcely believe what he had just lived through. Speaking to Canal+, the defender admitted no one could have imagined such a wild finale. He spoke of a squad bound by something deeper than tactics or systems, a group that leans into suffering and finds its strength there.
For Aguilar, the badge on his chest carries weight.
"When you wear this logo, you have to give 100 per cent," he said, underlining how much this run in Europe means to Lens and their supporters. Every sprint, every tackle, every late surge was, in his words, “for the people of Lens,” and nights like this, he insisted, exist only at this club. Pride poured through every sentence: they had not just survived; they had authored a European memory.
The defender’s joy was not his alone. He lingered on his bond with Thauvin, the other man on the scoresheet. They had trained together earlier in their careers, pushed each other in quieter, less glamorous surroundings. Now they shared a Champions League stage and a Champions League night that neither will forget.
"We were trained together and tonight we both scored in the Champions League," Aguilar said, delighted that his “buddy Flo” walked away with the man of the match award. The affection was obvious: they laugh together, they suffer together, and, as he put it, “we’re all rewarded.”
Aguilar made sure to widen the spotlight. The starters, the substitutes, the players who only tasted the tension from the bench – all, he insisted, had carried the same thread of togetherness through every twist and turn in Prague.
Lens now have no time to linger over the replays. The emotion of this European thriller has to harden quickly into something more practical.
Toppmöller’s men return to Ligue 1 on Sunday, when they host Le Mans FC, carrying with them a fresh layer of resilience and a belief forged in those frantic final minutes. The question now is simple: can a night like this in Prague become the spark that shapes their entire season?
