Monaco inches closer to PSG at Ligue 1 summit

Fontvieille, Monaco (SportsNetwork.com) - Monaco pulled to within three points of Paris Saint-Germain for the top spot in Ligue 1 after the principality club earned a 2-0 win over Marseille on Sunday at the Stade Louis II.

Playing in its first game without star striker Radamel Falcao, who suffered a torn ACL in a Coupe de France match in midweek, Monaco had the better of the play for much of the first half before finally breaking a scoreless deadlock in the 41st minute when Valere Germain got on the end of a nice pass from Joao Moutinho and buried it into the bottom right corner.

After the break, Marseille picked up its play a bit and created some quality chances on goal, but were burned on the counter attack in the 57th minute after Geoffrey Kondogbia sent Emmanuel Riviere in behind the Marseille defense with a nice through ball and he fired it high into the top left corner.

Marseille was unable to get one past Monaco goalkeeper Danijel Subasic as the principality club came away with all three points.

Marseille drop to ninth place in Ligue 1 with the result on 32 points, nine adrift from the top three.

Elsewhere in France on Sunday, Alexandre Lacazette netted on either side of the intermission and Bafetimbi Gomis added a third goal as Lyon cruised to a 3-0 victory over 10-man Evian at the Stade de Gerland.

Gomis opened the scoring after 19 minutes and Evian's Jonathan Mensah was shown a straight red card five minutes before the break to reduce the visitors to 10 men.

Lacazette then put the result away with goals in the 43rd and 76th minutes to hand Lyon an important three points and a third successive victory across all competitions.

Finally on Sunday in France, Bordeaux earned its first win in league play since a 2-1 triumph over Valenciennes on Dec. 15 thanks to goals from Abdou Traore and Carlos Henrique.