Profile of Alassane Plea, Scorer of Gladbach’s hat-trick in the Champions League

DBasia.news – The third match of the 2020-2021 Champions League season became the stage for Alassane Plea to show his abilities. The Borussia Monchengladbach attacker scored his first hat-trick in a competition between elite European clubs.

This moment occurred when Gladbach visited Shakhtar Donetsk headquarters in Group B continued at the Kiev Olympic Stadium, Wednesday (4/11) am. Plea’s three goals completed the German representatives’ victory with a striking 6-0 score.

Plea’s three goals were scored in the 8th, 26th and 78th minutes. The French striker also contributed one assist for Lars Stindl’s goal in the 65th minute.

What Plea and Gladbach did was extraordinary. Apart from being carried out in away matches, Shakhtar was also not an arbitrary team and had defeated Real Madrid in the first group stage match.

It was Gladbach’s biggest away win in Europe in 47 years. Instead, it was Shakhtar’s biggest home defeat in European competition.

Plea’s name may still be unfamiliar to football lovers. However, he graduated from the Olympique Lyon youth team which is one of the best academies in Europe.

Interestingly, Plea is not a native of the city of Lyon. He was born in Lille even though he never studied football at the Losc Lille academy.

Plea was discovered by the Lyon scouting team when he was 16 years old. His performance with the local team stole the attention of Gerard Bonneau.

Plea is one of the golden generations of the Lyon academy with Samuel Umtiti, Alexandre Lacazette, Nbil Fekir, and Bayern Munich. However, his career has not been as brilliant as his peers.

The player of Mali descent has only appeared 12 times in the Lyon senior team. Plea also decided to move to Nice at the age of 21 after being loaned to Auxerre.

Plea started his career at Nice playing as a winger. His position was later changed by Claude Puel, who was then serving as a coach.

Plea’s performance as a center forward was further honed when Lucien Favre took over as coach in the summer of 2016. The opportunity to partner with Mario Balotelli has further improved his quality.

The duo of Plea and Balotelli led Nice to finish in third place in Ligue 1 2016-2017. Unfortunately this slick performance failed to be repeated one season ago.

Plea then chose to leave for Borussia Monchengladbach in the summer of 2018. The German club reportedly had to spend 25 million euros to make this transfer a reality.

Plea’s performance in his first season with Gladbach was relatively stable. He was able to score 15 goals and 4 assists in all competitions and became the club’s top scorer.

While in the 2019-2020 season, the productivity of his goals decreased with a collection of only 10 goals. But Plea achieved it with 11 assists.

Now that he is 27 years old, Plea is in his golden age. Understandably, the Gladbach public had high hopes for the Thierry Henry idol.

His first hat-trick in the Champions League certainly adds to Plea’s confidence. It is possible that he will compete with the big names in the list of top scorers this season.