The owners of the hotel where Shelbourne stayed in Lille these past few days may have flattered the Irish champions when they parked a €90,000 Maserati sports car in the lobby in the hope, perhaps, one of the visiting footballers would simply charge the thing to his room.

Having let the Irish champions off the hook in Dublin two weeks ago when they had looked set to run out easy winners at half-time, Lille clearly had the measure of their opponents last night at their Metropole Stadium. After "taking their foot off the gas" in the drawn game they won this one while barely at full throttle for most of the 90 minutes.

"I'm disappointed to be out of it but you can't complain," said Pat Fenlon after seeing his side go down to first-half goals from Milenko Acimovic and Matt Moussilou. "We would have loved to progress, we really would have, but they're a very good team, a better one than us and you never mind so much when you lose to a very good team.

"Now we've just got to get on with things," he added. "The lads have done themselves proud in eight European games this year but it's Derry on Monday night, please God, and the priority now is to win the league so we can get back into the Champions League and give this another go next year."

His players started much as they did in Dublin a couple of weeks ago. Fenlon had spoken earlier in the week about the inability of many Irish clubs to cope with the tempo with which European sides play their football for 90 minutes. But here, just as at Lansdowne Road, the French showed that such relative newcomers to the world of full-time football have no answer to the power and pace at which the likes of Acimovic, Mathieu Bodmer and Christophe Landarin are capable of operating at.

The Slovenian midfielder, Acimovic, was a particular source of trouble from the very start, although Shelbourne hardly helped their cause by giving away a succession of free kicks within what was the former Tottenham's player's firing range.

Steve Williams must have been relieved to see a couple of the 27-year-old's early efforts whizz wide of the left-hand angle, but it quickly became apparent the Welshman's luck wasn't going to hold up. He survived barely more than a quarter of an hour before being beaten for the first time.

It was a poor goal for the Irish champions to give away with Lille winning possession deep inside their own half and moving it first to Bodmer and then out to the left where Acimovic had an embarrassing amount of time to pick his spot, the bottom right corner.

For the following seven minutes the visitors were reduced to 10 men as Jim Crawford received treatment for a cut above the eye but they survived the spell with no more than a poor long-range effort by Johan Audel.

Not long after Crawford returned, though, the locals doubled their lead with Acimovic releasing the ball to Matt Moussilou moments before he was flattened by a crude late challenge from Crawford and the striker's shot took a deflection off Jamie Harris that left Williams helpless.

Only the dramatic events of the second half in Dublin seemed to offer any hope to Shelbourne who were again being overrun in midfield and repeatedly opened up at the back. Neither of the visiting side's wide men could make any impact on the proceedings while the contribution of a less than fully fit Alan Moore was fairly negligible in the centre where Stuart Byrne and Crawford had to do a great deal of thankless chasing.

The Shelbourne defence did its best to retain some shape but it was proving difficult as they were pulled one way then another by a fast and fluid Lille attack. Even well into the second half, after some of the urgency had been drained from Lille's game, the French midfield seemed able to sweep forward into the Shelbourne area almost at will while their swift passing under pressure repeatedly frustrated the Irish players on the those occasions they did manage to press forward.

Twice David Crawley came to Shelbourne's rescue with well- timed and deftly-executed tackles, but as in the first leg, Claude Puel must have wondered just how it was that his players could squander so many chances in front of goal. It mattered little, though, either to the 12,000-strong crowd who began to celebrate victory even as a downpour drenched in the second half, or to the Lille players who never looked remotely like staging a repeat of the first leg's late defensive collapse.

Tony Sylva gathered under pressure from Crawley and then kept hold of an Alan Cawley free hit firmly from distance during the last four minutes. That was as tough as it got for the home keeper. Shelbourne did their best to salvage something with Fenlon throwing bodies forward and bringing another couple of strikers on but Fitzpatrick could work no magic this time. Jason Byrne will have no cause this time to reproach himself for fluffing the chances that came his way for there simply were none.

LILLE: Sylva; Angbwa, Tavlaridis, Schmitz, Tafforeau; Makoun, Bodmer; Landarin, Acimovic (Chalme, 84 mins), Audel (Miralas, 90 mins); Moussilou (Brunel, 66 mins).

SHELBOURNE: Williams; Heary, Harris, Rogers, Crawley; Crawford; Hoolahan McCarthy, 80 mins), Moore (Fitzpatrick, 65 mins), S Byrne (Cawley, 88 mins), Cahill; J Byrne.

Referee: M Bozinovski (Macedonia).