For a night the Stade de la Meinau belonged to Gessime Yassine. Trailing to a first-half Florian Thauvin penalty, Strasbourg summoned the kind of resolve that transforms an anxious evening into a defining one, and it was Yassine who twice delivered the blow. His second goal, five minutes from time, sent the home crowd into raptures and left Lens staring at a defeat few of them saw coming when Thauvin rolled his spot-kick into the corner.

This was a match that swung on its hinges. Lens arrived carrying themselves like a side third in the table, sharp and forward-leaning, and for forty-five minutes they looked the part. Yet football rarely rewards early comfort, and Strasbourg's response after the interval was immediate, ruthless and, ultimately, decisive. A 2-1 win that felt like more than three points changed the mood of a young season.

The scoreline scarcely captures the shift in momentum. From the moment Yassine equalised barely three minutes into the second half, the balance of the contest tilted and never quite tilted back. Strasbourg smelt blood; Lens, so assured before the break, began to look like a team playing to protect something they no longer held.

Thauvin's cold opener

The first half followed the script Lens would have written for themselves. They pressed, they probed, and when the opportunity arrived on the half-hour mark they took it without a flicker of hesitation. Thauvin stepped up to the penalty spot in the 38th minute and dispatched it with a left-footed strike into the bottom-left corner, the goalkeeper sent the wrong way, the finish never in doubt.

It was the goal of a player who has done this a thousand times, and it gave Lens exactly the platform their standing in the table suggested they deserved. At that point Strasbourg looked short of ideas and short of belief, a side sixth on goal difference and struggling to impose themselves on a fixture that was slipping away from them.

But a lead earned before half-time can be a fragile thing, and Lens carried theirs into the interval without the second goal that might have settled matters. That failure to press home their advantage would prove the story of the night. One goal was never going to be enough to hold this Strasbourg back.

Yassine strikes back

Whatever was said in the Strasbourg dressing room worked instantly. Three minutes into the second half, Sebastian Nanasi slid the ball into the path of Yassine on the right side of the box, and the finish was clinical: a right-footed strike arrowed low into the bottom-right corner. The Meinau roared, the equaliser as sudden as it was deserved, and the entire complexion of the contest changed in a heartbeat.

Nanasi, quietly, was becoming the pivot on which the match turned. His vision and his willingness to run at a Lens defence suddenly unsettled gave Strasbourg an edge they had lacked before the break. The home side grew into every subsequent phase, pressing higher, believing harder, and forcing Lens onto the back foot for long stretches of the second half.

For all their earlier polish, Lens had no answer to the intensity that met them. The visitors, who had looked so composed while ahead, now found the game running through their opponents. Chances came and went, tension gathered, and the sense grew that whoever struck next would strike decisively.

The killer break

It was Strasbourg, and it was Yassine again. In the 85th minute they broke at speed, Nanasi once more the provider, releasing his man on the counter with the Lens defence stretched and scrambling. Yassine took the pass in the centre of the box and repeated his earlier trick, guiding a right-footed finish into the bottom-right corner. Two goals, two assists, one shared understanding that broke Lens's resistance.

The fast break that produced the winner was a portrait of a side transformed. Where Strasbourg had been passive in the first half, they were now direct and lethal, punishing Lens for pushing forward in search of a second of their own. The visitors were caught between the need to chase the game and the danger of doing so, and that hesitation cost them everything.

There was no way back in the minutes that remained. Lens, who had begun the evening looking every inch a top-three team, trudged off having surrendered a lead and a night that had once seemed theirs. For Strasbourg, the celebrations spoke of a result that will linger far longer than the points it brought.

What it means

The table tells a curious tale after this early flurry of the season. Both sides sit on three points, each with a win and a defeat to their name, but the manner of this result matters far beyond the numbers. Strasbourg climb the standings with a victory built on character, their attacking numbers improved and their confidence restored after a difficult opening to the campaign.

Lens, third and full of promise before kick-off, are left to reckon with how they let this one slip. Six goals scored across their opening fixtures speak to their firepower, but a defeat surrendered from a winning position exposes a fragility they will want to address quickly. Their early standing now looks a little more precarious than it did at half-time.

For Strasbourg, the message is simpler and sweeter. On a night when they might have folded, they instead found a hero and a way. Yassine and Nanasi have given the Meinau something to cherish, and given their season a jolt of momentum it badly needed. Ligue 1 has been served notice that this Strasbourg side will not go quietly.