Pierre Sage Tactics At RC Lens 2025/2026: Lessons From Ligue 1’s Corner-Kick Specialists – Set-Piece Analysis

The competition in Ligue 1 is tight, with Paris Saint-Germain in first place with 30 points, while Olympique de Marseille and Lens are behind PSG with 28 points (at the time of writing).

Lens are in a good position compared to last season (eighth), achieving good results and still competing to get the title so far.

Looking at their stats, we found out that they scored eight of their 22 goals from set plays (36%), especially from attacking corners.

In set-pieces, Lens and PSG are the top scorers, each with eight goals.

However, Lens are better in XG from set pieces (4.12) compared to PSG (2.36).

They have scored all of their eight set-piece goals from corners, while PSG have scored five goals from corners, so we will dive into their offensive-corner tactics in this set-piece analysis.

In this tactical analysis, we will dissect their attacking corners and demonstrate how Pierre Sages side excels in this area by utilising simple principles.

Lens Outswinging Crosses To Far Runners

First of all, Lens have simple tactics and principles that are effective, varied, and fit their players.

These aspects are the ones that really measure how good teams are at set-pieces, not just the tricks that look great on social media and short reels.

These tricks are sometimes important, but you can see an idea which may succeed one in 100 times, while you may rarely see reels for teams who are really good at set-pieces, and you may even consider many of their goals boring, repetitive and sometimes lucky.

Lens utilise out-swinging crosses, applying some important principles that match this kind of cross: framing the ball (cross trajectory), framing the goal, causing orientation problems for the man markers, and sometimes dynamic mismatch over the zonal markers.

As shown below, they usually have a player who starts in the six-yard (white) behind the zonal defender on the near post (against man-marking and zonal marking systems) coming from his blind side.

This starting position allows the attacker to attack the area ahead of the zonal marker suddenly from the defenders blind side, who usually finds it difficult to track the ball in the air and the attacker coming from his blind side at the same time.

The remaining players in the box usually act as far runners, standing vertically in a stack to prevent the man markers from sticking to them, so the man markers are forced to wait without knowing which direction each runner will run.

Lets track the player in red (the last player in the stack).

As the taker moves, the stack begins to separate in different directions (yellow arrows), confusing the man markers.

This leaves the player in red a little bit far from his marker, which is called separation, so he can gain momentum over the awaiting man markers, who can also be easily manipulated because he needs to track the ball in the air at the same time.