West Ham star Declan Rice has sent messages to Lyon and striker Moussa Dembele after what both did ahead of the Europa League quarter-final tie.
Rice, 23, was back to his very best in France on Thursday night after an average first leg performance at the London Stadium a week ago. However, his goal before half-time coupled with his overall commanding performance helped the Hammers to reach their first European semi-final in 46 years.
His celebration just showed how much the east London club mean to him amid constant transfer speculation to the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United. Although his future isn't fully secured for 2022/23, one thing that is for sure is that West Ham's No.41 will be competing on the major European stage against an Eintracht Frankfurt side that shocked Barcelona over two legs.
"Frankfurt in the semis? I did German in school but gave it up after two weeks! For them to beat Barca they’re a top side" he revealed post-match in his BT Sport interview. "Whether it was a poor night from Barca, they still had to score three against them. We saw them against Betis and they looked a real strong side. We’ll be ready for whatever, two games again, we know what we want and that’s to reach the final and we’ll do anything we can to get there.
"Nah! [if they can celebrate] Burnley Sunday! We go again." Some of the talk coming into this tie was of the arrogance shown by Lyon to indicate initially that they would walk all over David Moyes' side. However, from the first leg itself when the Hammers were down to 10 men, the Ligue 1 side were wrong in many ways.
Their reel of tweets throughout the tie included one asking: "Are you really asking like there's a chance we don't go through?" That backfired badly and Rice made that known with his short response on his Twitter: 'This aged well.' Another of their tweets showed former Chelsea target Moussa Dembele winking in what was a cheeky tweet from the Lyon social media admin once more.
To which the midfielder responded on BT Sport: "I feel like if you can’t get up for these games you shouldn’t be playing football. The roar from the warm-up was spine-tingling.
"It gives you the fire in your belly to go out and perform. There were a few incentives tonight for us to go out and win, Dembele winking in the first leg and their Twitter admin saying they don’t see how they don’t go through and those things come back to bite you. We put in the performance and West Ham in the semis, what more do you want."
West Ham fans- Do you think winning the Europa League will keep Rice happy enough to snub Chelsea and Man United for at least one more year? Leave your thoughts in the comments section!
