Lyon Re-Cap

By: Inara | April 4th, 2007

Hi everyone, I’m Inara. I’ll be doing my best to keep you all updated with team news, player rumors, back room drama, and all other gossip associated with Olympique Lyonnais.

To get this started, I just thought I’d give a quick recap of Lyon’s season so far, which is…exactly the same as the past five years. Lyon has basically won Le Championnat again, and when they do, they will be the first club from one of the major European leagues to win six domestic titles in succession…but many argue that their season has once again been a failure.

It’s maddening because Lyon is one of those teams that is capable of so much and yet manages to disappoint when things really matter. Despite their consecutive titles, they haven’t managed to achieve a domestic double by winning either of the two domestic cups (the Coupe de France and Coupe de la Ligue), both of which they lost out on due to last gasp goals. Though at least this year, they did reach the CdL final. Props for that (well, some props).

And on the European front…I wouldn’t say that Lyon have been failures exactly. They’ve had some truly spectacular victories in the Champions League and have consistently been the group winners in the past few years. They’ve certainly done enough to be branded perennial dark horses in Europe, and there are quite a few teams who want to avoid them at all costs.

But despite their potential, they have also been labeled as perennial Champions League bottlers. They lost to Porto, PSV, and AC Milan in the quarterfinals for the past three years, and this year, they suffered a rather embarrassing exit in the Round of 16 by a resurgent AS Roma.

So now that Lyon is sitting at the top of their league, with nothing left to play for…what are they going to do now?

French National Team manager Raymond Domenech is sufficiently worried about it that he’s going to come down to Lyon himself in the next two weeks to make sure all his players are still motivated for the Euro 2008 qualifiers in June.

Aulas has promised quite a bit of money for transfers this summer, so I think he’s finally gotten the hint that scraping Ligue 1 and Brazil for raw talent isn’t enough to hack it with the big boys. We can all expect a big signing this summer. Rumors are linking Lyon with Trezeguet and Ribery, though I think Aulas will be trying to find another winger. Names such as Nani and Quaresma have been mentioned (I’m serious!).

Lyon Re-Cap

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