CdF: Concarneau vs. Lyon

By: Inara | January 2nd, 2009

Say hello to 2009!

Let’s hope that Lyon’s New Years resolution is that they’ll stop fucking around and start taking the “little” teams seriously. They’ve already lost all chances of reclaiming the Coupe de la Ligue thanks to an embarrassing loss to second division Metz, and it’s no secret that Lyon have lost quite a few points to smaller clubs in the league. Tomorrow’s opponents may be a fifth division team, but weirder upsets have happened.

January 3rd, 2008
Stade du Roudourou, Guingamp
3 PM ET (21:00 CET, 20:00 GMT)

Match Background:

US Concarneau play in France’s fifth division, in the Championnat de France Amateurs 2. The CFA2 is comprised of amateur clubs and the reserve teams of clubs in higher divisions. Concarneau is an amateur club that have never made the jump to a professional outfit. In the Coupe de France, the tradition is that the lower team plays at home, which for Concarneau is the Stade Kerampéru, but the venue was deemed too small for such a high profile visiting team, not to mention the multitude of security and press issues. Lyon offered to switch the game to the Gerland, but Concarneau refused. Instead, the game will be held at the nearby Stade du Roudourou at Guingamp, which has over double the capacity of the Kerampéru.

For Concarneau, this is the biggest game of the season for them and probably one of the biggest games in the history of their club. Their players are going into the match with no expectations but to enjoy themselves. But there is a certain magic to cup matches, and Concarneau will be hoping that they can take advantage if Lyon slip up.

Lyon may be playing against lambs, so to speak, but they are under pressure to play convincingly well. Which means that they need to score more than one goal while also not conceding stupid ones. Puel and his players have a tough second half of the season coming up with Champions League against Barca as well as a dwindling lead in Ligue 1.

Lyon Info:

Thankfully there are no new injuries to report, though that’s always a concern when players are off doing who knows what over the winter holidays. Miralem Pjanic makes a welcome return to the bench, and Mathieu Bodmer and Francois Clerc are back in light training, though they are still weeks away from competitive playing. Only Anthony Reveillere remains in serious recovery.

Le groupe lyonnais: Lloris, Vercoutre, Hartock - Gassama, Kolo, Mensah, Cris, Boumsong, Faure, Grosso - Toulalan, Makoun, Källström, Juninho, Ederson - Mounier, Govou, Keita, Pjanic, Delgado, Benzema, Fred, Piquionne, Tafer.

Puel isn’t taking any chances with Concarneau and will not put a reserve team out against them though it may not be the strongest lineup that starts tomorrow. Joan Hartock and Yannis Tafer will be joining the senior team (though they normally remain with the CFA). One glaring omission is Fabio Santos, who showed up for training several days late and is now being punished by being left out of a nearly full strength Lyon squad.

Expected Lineup:

Vercoutre
Mensah - Cris - Boumsong - Grosso
Makoun - Kallstron
Ederson
Keita - Benzema - Delgado

I totally made up the above lineup. Defensively, the options are a lot more limited, and Puel may either continue using John Mensah out of position on the left, or give Lamine Gassama (and Timothée Kolodziejczak) a chance to accumulate more experience. In midfield, Puel may choose to use only one DM - two seem rather excessive against Concarneau. As for the arrangement up front, Lyon have so many attacking options available that it seems pointless to try to guess what Puel will put out tomorrow.

Viewing Options:

You can check here for streams, and you can also find a liveblog (in French) here.

Expected Result:

Is a 2-0 too much to ask?