Olivier Giroud to face Aston Villa, his favourite opponents | OneFootball

Olivier Giroud heads into Lille’s Europa League tie at Aston Villa on Thursday, 18:45, to face the side he has scored against most in his career.

On 26 February he played 120 minutes as Lille overturned a 0-1 first-leg deficit to win 2-0 after extra time. At 39 years and five months he became the Europa League knockout’s oldest scorer, surpassing Edin Dzeko. As reported by L'Équipe, he treated it as if it might be his last European game.

He is Lille’s joint top European scorer with four alongside Hamza Igamane, striking the winner against Brann on 25 September and a decisive penalty against Freiburg on 29 January to secure a play-off place.

Across 790 club matches he has 300 goals, 10 of them against Villa, eight for Arsenal and two for Chelsea, across 10 meetings. He netted in the 2015 FA Cup final, a 4-0 win that made Arsenal record holders, and hit his only Premier League hat-trick against Villa a year earlier.

Illness kept him out of Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Lorient after a brief 1 March outing in the 1-0 win over Nantes. The tie also offers a reunion with Emiliano Martinez, a former Arsenal team-mate and France’s World Cup final antagonist in 2022.

In three meetings with Martinez, Giroud has scored once, a header in a 1-1 draw on 28 December 2020. His Europa League zenith came in 2019 with Chelsea, top scorer on 11 and outstanding in the 4-1 final win over Unai Emery’s Arsenal.

Source: L'Équipe