Metz vs. Lyon, aka Champions League Warm Up

FC Metz vs. Olympique Lyonnais

September 15, 2007
Stade Municipal Saint-Symphorien, Metz
2:00 PM Eastern Time (20:00 in France)

Match details:

This Saturday, Lyon travel to the northeast corner of France to take on Metz, one of the three sides that were promoted from Ligue 2 this season. It would seem that this is a meaningless match, with Metz hopelessly out of depth against the six time champions, but don’t be too sure.

Lyon had nine players away on international duty this past week, and nearly all of them prepared for two matches, and let’s not forget the host of injured players. Most importantly, four days after the game against Metz, Lyon will be traveling to Camp Nou to take on Barcelona. So it’s fair to say that Lyon will be distracted.

Metz, on the other hand, have only collected two points out of a possible 21, have yet to win a game but lost five (they drew the other two). So Metz will be looking to prove themselves in front of their home fans. Sam at the France Offside wrote a nice review of what we can expect from Metz this season, so check it out here.

Interestingly, the head-to-head record is in Metz’s favor, with 20 wins, 6 draws, and only 12 losses. But most of those games took place when Metz were the giants while Lyon were the upstart promoted team. In the past five years, when Metz received Lyon at home, they won once, drew twice, and lost to Lyon twice. Still, that’s not a bad record, especially when you consider the head-to-head record of teams like PSG, Marseille, and St. Etienne against Lyon.

Another factoid: in the past eight years, the one time Lyon lost a game before their first group stage match, they lost the CL match as well.

Lyon info:

Lyon still have several key players injured (Cris, Gregory Coupet, Fred, and Patrick Muller) or just returning from a long lay off (Hatem Ben Arfa, Cleber Anderson).

Le groupe lyonnais: Vercoutre, Roux, Squillaci, Bodmer, Réveillère, Clerc, Belhadj, Grosso, Cleber Anderson, Fabio Santos, Juninho, Ben Arfa, Källström, Toulalan, Keita, Benzema, Govou, Baros.

Since Alain Perrin will be looking ahead to the match against Barcelona (though he’ll deny it, of course), it’s very likely that he’ll put out Lyon’s “B” team (or as Domenech would say, A’) against Metz, in order to give the international players some extra rest and also keeping them fresh so they don’t get slaughtered at Camp Nou. I doubt he’ll try more experimenting with a 4-4-2, but who knows. Strangely, despite Lyon looking more comfortable in a 4-3-3, more goals have been scored when Karim Benzema and Milan Baros play together. Strange, right?

Expected lineup:

Vercoutre
Clerc – Squillaci – Anderson – Belhadj
Bodmer – Fabio Santos – Juninho
Govou – Benzema – Ben Arfa

This formation will also give Fabio Santos and Nadir Belhadj much needed playing time while also allowing Mathieu Bodmer to play in his preferred position. Baros could be used in place of Benzema, but Benzema seems more energetic than Baros and more likely to recover from playing matches so close together. I also think Juninho will start because since he is retired from the Brazilian NT, he didn’t do anything all week except practice, and he needs the match time. He’ll probably be replaced with Kim Kallstrom in the second half.

Expected result:

Metz will put up a fight, as teams tend to play with more fervor (and with ten men behind the ball) against Lyon than they do most other teams. But Lyon need a good result before heading out to meet Barcelona, and the bench players will be wanting to prove to Perrin that they deserve a starting spot. Metz on the other hand, while not good at scoring goals (they’ve scored only one goal in Le Championnat so far), have only conceded eight goals in their last seven games. So don’t expect Lyon to walk all over them. So let’s say 0-2 at most.

Category: Ligue 1

Tags: Ligue 1, Lyon

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