RC Lens Achieves Historic Comeback Against Slavia Prague
Ruben Aguilar turned a wild European night into club folklore as RC Lens stole a staggering 3-2 win over Slavia Prague in the UEFA Champions League at the Fortuna Arena.
For long stretches, this looked like the kind of evening that haunts a dressing room.
Lens, reduced to ten men, were staring at defeat when Sturm fired Prague 2-1 ahead in the 89th minute. Dino Toppmöller’s side had pushed, chased, and suffered, only to be punished at the death. The away end sagged. The clock bled into stoppage time. It felt over.
Then the match detonated.
Florian Thauvin dragged Lens back from the brink in the 91st minute, sweeping in an equaliser that flipped despair into raw belief. Two minutes later, Aguilar stepped into the moment that will follow him for the rest of his career, drilling a superb strike inside the post to complete an extraordinary turnaround.
From 2-1 down in the 89th to 3-2 up in the 93rd. Ten men. Away from home. In the Champions League.
The victory was more than just three points. It marked Lens’s first away win in Europe’s elite competition since 1998, snapping a 26-year wait in the most dramatic fashion imaginable.
Speaking to Canal+ after the final whistle, Aguilar admitted that no one could have plotted such chaos on a tactics board. He spoke about the emotional bond inside this Lens squad, about a group that leans into the suffering rather than shying away from it, and how that shared hardship underpins their unity.
For Aguilar, the badge on his chest framed everything.
“When you wear this logo, you have to give 100 per cent,” he said. “We give everything for the people of Lens, and it's only at this club that you can experience emotions like this. I'm very proud tonight. We couldn't have written this scenario.”
The defender’s joy wasn’t just personal. He lingered on his connection with Thauvin, a friendship built on training pitches earlier in their careers and now crystallised on one of the biggest stages in football. Both scored in the Champions League on the same night, a shared milestone that clearly meant as much as the result.
“We were trained together and tonight we both scored in the Champions League,” Aguilar added. “My buddy Flo got the man of the match trophy, and I'm so happy for him. We're really good friends, we have a blast, we suffer together, and we're all rewarded.”
He made a point of widening the praise beyond the headline names. Starters, substitutes, every player in the squad – Aguilar highlighted how all of them stayed locked in through every twist and turn of a match that refused to settle.
Lens now have to come down from the high.
The European campaign has exploded into life, but Toppmöller’s men are back in Ligue 1 on Sunday, when they host Le Mans FC. The task is clear: turn the adrenaline of Prague into something sustainable, carry this resilience and steel into the domestic grind, and prove that nights like this are not just one-off miracles but the start of something lasting.
