Rony Lopes scored the winner midway through the second half as second-place Monaco beat Bordeaux 2-1 in the French league on Friday.\u00a0The attacking midfielder is emerging as a replacement for Bernardo Silva, who was arguably Monaco\u2019s best player when it won the league and reached the Champions League semifinals last season. Silva\u2019s scintillating form earned him a big-money move to runaway English Premier League leader Manchester City.<\/p>\n
Lopes was on City\u2019s books in 2014 but made only a handful of appearances. He was loaned to Monaco and then to Lille, before joining Monaco on a permanent basis. He confidently swept the ball home from right of the penalty area in the 69th minute for his eighth league goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy to have helped the team,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cWe keep fighting until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fleet-footed and skillful Lopes has an extra incentive to keep his form going, as he is eyeing a place in Portugal\u2019s World Cup squad. He has one international cap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a dream for me, but I know it\u2019s difficult,\u201d he said. \u201cI can do it and if I get there I\u2019ll be very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midfielder Valentin Vada\u2019s powerful shot from near the penalty spot put Bordeaux ahead in the 32nd minute.<\/p>\n
Forward Stevan Jovetic equalized on the stroke of halftime, slotting into the bottom corner after running onto midfielder Thomas Lemar\u2019s pass for his sixth goal in 12 league games.<\/p>\n
Monaco is 11 points behind league leader Paris Saint-Germain, and five points ahead of third-place Marseille.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rony Lopes scored the winner midway through the second half as second-place Monaco beat Bordeaux 2-1 in the French league on Friday.\u00a0The attacking midfielder is emerging as a replacement for Bernardo Silva, who was arguably Monaco\u2019s best player when it won the league and reached the Champions League semifinals last season. Silva\u2019s scintillating form earned him a big-money move to runaway English Premier League leader Manchester City. Lopes was on City\u2019s books in 2014 but made only a handful of appearances. He was loaned to Monaco and then to Lille,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7650,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7648\/revisions\/7650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}